The Gift of Slowing Down

Written by Barbara Greenberg, founder – Rediscovering U

The 2nd Annual Rediscovering U Retreat uncovered many gifts to the women attending. One of the first was the poem I shared Saturday morning. I was told it had been read by the Chaplin of the Congress at the beginning of a session many years ago.  It may have lost a word here or there over the years it took to reach me. Nevertheless, the message remains clear. Listening to it in the beauty of northern Minnesota, overlooking a calm lake surrounded by trees in all their autumn brilliance, reminded us we each have a special purpose in this life…. the greatest of which is to be ourselves, truly and genuinely.

Here is the poem.

Slow me down,

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting my mind.

Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me, amid the confusion the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing 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 a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book.

Remind me each day of the the fable of the hare and the tortoise, that I may know the race is not always to the swift – that there is more to life than increasing it’s speed.

Let me look upward into the branches of the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong, because it grew slowly and well.

Slow me down and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values, that I may grow towards the height of my greater destiny.