Expidite the expidited

I got the following pic of my deer friend that often stops by for breakfast. She is quite calm for a deer. The llamas and the deer are friends and we imagine that they each covet each others situation.

"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 and muscles with the music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Help me to know the magic 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 fable of the hare and the tortoise that I may know 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. Amen."

WILFRED A. PETERSON

Wilfred A. Peterson in Adventures in the Art of Living, published by Simon and Schuster, New York.