Go slow, -- Stay low, -- Don’t blow!

Joe was always ready to fly off the handle. He was full of anxiety and tension, -- all part of his racing restless mind. He was a good man with high ideals, a little too high at times. At least, they were beyond his reach for the moment. He needed to take one day at a time, to slow down in his rush for the stars. It would have been good if he could have taken on board the sentiment of the 17th century Blaise Pascal that “all the troubles of the world stem from the fact that we cannot sit still in a room.”

If he had met the right kind of girl who would have listened, not just to his mind, but to his fast-beating heart, perhaps he might have found the stillness that would have healed him. She could have told him of Meister Eckhart the 14th century Dominican friar who said that
“nothing in all creation is so like to God as stillness.”

At a prayer meeting one night, they told him not to trample the flowers under his feet as he rushed on headlong to achieve his ambition. Someone spoke these words: Go slow, stay low and don’t blow! He’s now praying, “Slow me down Lord and help me not to blow it every time I open my mouth.”

Joe hasn’t yet found the girl who would touch his heart, but he has learnt a few lessons from his little furry black cat. She sleeps a lot, cuddles up to the hot pipes and stretches herself in the sun. She is stay low personified. But when the time is right, she springs into action, climbs trees, chases birds and murders small mice. She could teach any human being how to be a contemplative like Mary and a woman of action like Martha—all in one.