Against the Quickening: Faith, Time, and Living at the Pace of Love

Why does life seem to speed up as we grow older-and what happens when the pressures of life begin moving faster than people can bear?

In Against the Quickening: Faith, Time, and Living at the Pace of Love, Australian chaplain, writer and mechanic Trevor W Forrester explores what he calls the Differential of Life: an analogy drawn from the ordinary motor-vehicle differential, where wheels travel at different speeds while remaining connected around a shared centre.

Forrester uses that picture to consider a deeper human reality. We do not all move through life with the same margin, opportunities, burdens or pressures. Some have room to manoeuvre; others live close to the edge. Yet difference need not become division.

Drawing on personal experience, hospital chaplaincy, battlefield leadership at Ia Drang and Utah Beach, the Crusades, religious intolerance, acts of courage during the Bondi attack, and the failures and responsibilities of the Christian church, the book asks a recurring question:

When life quickens, who is willing to slow first?

For those with greater margin, authority or strength, the answer often lies in restraint-in what Forrester calls decelerating love: love willing to move at the pace of the vulnerable.

But this is not merely a book about social responsibility or slowing down. Its argument finally turns toward the Centre that gives the whole picture meaning: Jesus Christ.

Written in plain language from the perspective of a man whose life has included workshops, theological study, prolonged illness and pastoral care, Against the Quickening is a reflection on suffering, conscience, responsibility, courage, confession and grace.

It is an invitation to live more steadily in a hurried world-and to rediscover a Centre strong enough to hold us together when everything else seems to be speeding up.
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