Words + Images

It shouldn’t take the flu to slow one down, but sometimes it seems that way.  I do not think that I am particularly energetic but of late I have felt a need to slow down, or to encourage people around me to slow down.  So, how strange it was to rediscover amidst my journals a folded up piece of paper.  The program for my mother’s funeral service.  Inside was a poem that my brother had asked to be included, a poem that he had seen our mother reading, and which she kept folded in her bible.  I had not read it since her passing so many years ago.  When I stopped long enough this past week to look at it, I understood why she’d kept it.  I share it here on this slow, slow Monday.

Slow me down, Lord!

Ease the pounding of my heart

By the quieting of my mind.

Steady my harried pace

With a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me,

Amidst the confusions of my day,

The calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tensions of my nerves

With the soothing music of the sighing streams

That live in my memory.

Help me to know

The magical restoring power of sleep.

Teach me the art

Of taking minute vacations of slowing down to look at a flower;

To chat with an old friend or to make a new one;

To pat a stray dog;

To watch a spider build a web;

To smile at a child;

Or to read a few lines from a good book.

Remind me each day

That the race is not always to the swift;

That there is more to life than increasing its speed.

Le me look upward

Into the branches of the towering oak

And know that it grew slowly and well.

Slow me down, Lord,

And inspire me to send my roots deep

Into the soil of life’s enduring values

That I may grow toward the stars

Of my greater destiny.

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