Tell Me About Your Race of the Rat

The past 10 days of R&R has proven to me that you can step back from the race of the rat and enjoy some down time. We’ve needed this. I’ve not disconnected from my responsibilities, although they are still there. This time has proven to me that I’ve learned to trust and depend on those who are stepping in and stepping up. Thank you.

This past week has given me some of the best sleep I’ve had in years. Cool, dark, and comfortable. No noise makers to speak of, and that includes the dogs and chickens! Sitting around with family has given me peace, almost one that passes all understanding. There’s been no “game night” nor puzzle to solve. It’s been a comfortable pace of “slow me down, Lord.”

My thinking has slipped into neutral. I can let things go. My mind is still active. It’s like going into the trees on top of a hill, and enjoying the view, but still knowing the response that exists at another’s beck and call. Accountability does not disappear. Responsibility is tangible. But the downtime beckons me to replenish my strength, focus and purpose.

My dreams have been vivid. Conversations with those in my world, strangers, and marking events of time that are vivid as if it’s history, but they never occurred in my life.

How Do You Change Gears?

I read how business tycoons and technological creator’s work. It scares me to think that’s what you must do to be successful. At least, what the world considers success is often painted in dollars and cents. Name any one of them and you’ll find they keep a pace you don’t want in your own life. Or they know how to take chances you would never dream of. With keen foresight they see a need or opportunity and position themselves to leap when the bauble passes their path.

There’s a poem my mom shared with me years ago. I’ve used it numerous times when preaching, teaching, and writing. I researched it this morning. The author, Orin Crain, passed away from life this year (2021) at the age of 92. [Source] The source of the poem is often disputed, and authorship is differently claimed. Is it his, or does it go further back in time to the Hittite’s of 2,000 BC in modern day Turkey? If the drug culture of the ’60s enjoyed it, could they claim ownership?

Regardless, it sure sounds like it could be stripped from the Bible and modernized for the day the author penned the words.

Regardless of source, it speaks to me today.

Slow Me Down, Lord!

“Slow me down, Lord!
Ease the pounding of my heart
By the quieting of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace
With a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me,
Amidst the confusion of my day,
The calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves
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 an old friend or 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.

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, 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.”