Prayer of Saint Assisi

"External peace is impossible without inner peace.  It is noble to work at external solutions, but they cannot be successfully implemented so long as people have hatred and anger in their minds.  This has taught me that the perspectives of compassion, calm, and insight are essential to daily life and must be cultivated in daily practice.  Trouble is bound to come, so cultivating the right attitude is crucial.  The essential objective of daily practice is to cultivate an attitude of compassion and calm.  And to achieve a friendly attitude, a warm heart, respect for the rights of others, and concern for their welfare you must train the mind.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

It's an impressive prayer, this Prayer of St. Assisi. And he has a good back story: a rich kid who tired of the dissipated lifestyle he was living and returned home to meditate and teach and comfort and write. He eventually became quite well-known and, as often happens, his fame attracted a lot of hangers-on and other toadies who built a huge cathedral in his honor. They didn't ask him first, of course, because they were really building the cathedral for themselves. Eventually he must have said "fuck it, I'm outta here" because he retired to the outskirts of town, taking up residence in a cave or hut of some kind, better suited to the spiritual life he was trying to lead.

I'm not big on formal prayers but this one's pretty good. An instrument of peace, striving to bring love and understanding and hope and comfort and joy and light . . . I like that word: light. It brings to mind good energy, positivity. I hope that people feel lighter and freer after they've been in my presence. Not heavy. Some people make me feel like I've eaten a heavy meal - a crappy heavy meal in a dank stone corridor.