Happy New Year dear friends, my message to you today, is ‘Slow Down this Year!’
“What!” you exclaim.
Strange message for the New Year, isn’t it? When all your resolutions are about getting things done this year, changing yourself and changing the world, what I have to offer as advice is, to press your brakes gently, change to a lower gear and slow down.
A story goes that St John was stroking a tame partridge, when a famous hunter visited him. The hunter was carrying his bow and arrows with him. “What are you doing?” he turned to the saint and said. “Don’t you have a lot of work to do with the people of this world, preaching to them and changing their lives? Why do you waste your time with this bird?”
“What is that you carry in your hand?” asked St John.
“A bow,” said the hunter.
“Do you?” asked the saint, “carry it always and everywhere bent, taut and at full stretch?”
“No indeed,” said the hunter, “If I kept it at full stretch all the time, it would soon lose its elasticity; and the arrows would fly neither true nor straight nor fast.”
“The same with the human mind,” said St John. “Unless there are times when it is relaxed, a mind cannot follow its search for truth. The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight, and the mind which is always at full stretch will soon cease to be efficient.”
The following ‘Prayer for A Person in A Hurry’ is said to be popular among Glasgow businessmen:
Slow me down Lord!
Ease the pounding of my heart
By the quietening of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision
Of the eternal reach of time.

Teach me the art of taking
One minute vacations;
Of slowing me 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 fable of the hare and the tortoise
That I may learn
That the race is not always to the swift
That there is more to life than increasing my speed
.
Let me look upward to the branches of the
Towering oak.
And recall that it grew great and strong
By growing slowly and well..!
So to get things done this here, instead of being hurried and acting harried, like St John, slow down…
Happy New Year dear friends, and let the Year go slowly by..!

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