In June 2008 I travelled to Malaysia and Sri Lanka. It was quite a tiring trip and I thought it was a spiritual assault I was battling. Only after the colonoscopy and scans in October did I realise that the tiredness was caused by my body trying to cope with the advancing cancer in my liver.
During that trip a little voice inside me seemed to keep telling me that I should “slow down and smell the roses”. I did resolve that I would not travel so much without Bronwen and to seriously look at adjusting my lifestyle. There was also an inner sense of foreboding that I needed to do more than just think about slowing down.
I ended up writing a poem about my musings. I did not realise at the time just how prophetic the third verse would turn out to be. Till now I have only shared it with Bronwen. In the light of events over the past 9 months I think it might be opportune to let others read it (and hopefully heed its warning!):
Slow down
(D.S.Duncan, June 2008)
Slow down –
Impassioned, yet so easily bored
Too many goals lie incomplete;
Your ceaseless drive makes others tired;
Your visions, out of people’s reach;
And joints barked raw from scaling rocks;
It’s time you learned to –
Slow down, and smell the roses;
Flow along with God’s good plan.
Cease from striving
And conniving:
The dove can’t settle on a storm-tossed bough.
Slow down –
Consider God is never late
His promises to you endowed.
Don’t agitate, but contemplate
How He perfoms the things He’s vowed.
No need to try and force locked doors;
It’s time you learned to –
Slow down, and smell the roses;
Flow along with God’s good plan.
Cease from striving
And conniving:
The dove can’t settle on a storm-tossed bough.
Slow down –
Your plan to slow is ne’er today,
Until some crises strikes your plans
And trouble comes to dog your way,
Then it’s taken from your hands
You’ll have no other option then
Too late to learn to –
Slow down, and smell the roses;
Flow along with God’s good plan.
Cease from striving
And conniving:
The dove can’t settle on a storm-tossed bough.
REMEMBER - this was written 4 months before I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer plus secondaries in the liver!
Rosemary
30 July, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hi Doug
Love the poem – especially the image of the dove wanting to settle. Also – it reminds me of Petersen’s poem which Alex wrote music for and I used to sing way back in the late 80′s – see below.
Love and peace
Rosemary
Lord, Slow Me Down
Slow me down, Lord!
Ease the pounding of my heart
By 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 the swift;
That there is more life than increasing its speed.
Let 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.
- Wilfred Peterson
Angela Soh
30 July, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hello Ps Doug,
I’m Leslie Lim’s friend, Angela, living in Akl. Can I have persmission to post your poem on my facebook profile?
Thank you
Marilyn Price
2 August, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hi Doug
That was a lovely prophetic poem. It speaks to me. Praying for you. I often read your blog and pray for you and Bronwen. You cope so well in God’s strength.
God be with you
(Miss) Marilyn
Doug
6 August, 2009 at 8:20 am
Hi Angela,
Thanks for your comment about the poem, and yes, you have permission to post it to Facebook. It’s an expensive lesson for me to learn but I always seem to learn the hard way. If the poem will bless and/or warn someone else, then I will be grateful.