Poems and Prayers, Part 5

God, Thy Love is

Dear god and father of us all, we come in quiet trust
to offer all we have and are to Thee. When things
have played us false and plans have tumbled into dust,
Thy love is steady as the stars. When fears assail and
doubts annoy, we find our refuge in Thy strength.
Amidst the burden and the heat of the day.
Thou art as a mighty rock within a weary land.
So we worship and praise Thee with grateful hearts.
- Harold Blake Walker Minister of the First
Presbyterian Ckurch, EfVanston, Illinois

Character

It is not what a man
gets, but what a man
is, that he should think
of. He should first
think of his character,
and then of his condition. He that
has character need have no fear of
his condition. Character will draw
condition after it.
- W. Beechcr

If Any Little Word

If any little word of
ours can make one life
the brighter;
If any little song of
ours can make one
heart the lighter;
God help us speak that little word,
and take our bit of singing,
And drop it in some lonely vale,
and set the echoes ringing.
- Stevenson, Robert Louis(1850-1894)

The Treasure of Kindness

Guard well within your self
that treasure, kindness.
Know how to
give without hesitation,
how to lose without regret,
how to acquire without meaness.
—George Sand

A Prayer for Good Blessings

*STENATLIHAN, You are good!
I pray for a long life.
I pray for your good looks.
I pray for good breath.
I pray for good speech.
I pray for feet like yours to carry me
through a long life.
I pray for a life like yours.
I walk with people, ahead of me all
is well.
I pray for people to smile as long as
I live.
I pray to live long.
I pray, I say, for a long life to live
with you where the good people are.
I live in poverty.
I wish the people there to speak of
goodness and to talk to me.
I wish you to divide yourgood things
with me, as a brother.
Ahead of me is goodness, lead me on.
- An Apache Prayer
(* Stenatlihan is the supreme sky goddess)

Come to us with Dark Clouds

OH YOU!
Who dwell in the house made
of the Dawn.
In the home of evening twilight.
In the house made of dark cloud,
In the house made of the he rains,
In the house made of the dark mist,
In the house made of the she rain,
In the house made of peace;
Where the dark mist curtains the
door
The path to which is on the rainbow,
Where the zig-zag lightning on high
it stands
Male deity divine!
With your moccasins of dark cloud,
come to us!
With your headdress of dark cloud,
come to us!
With clouds dark, your mind enveloping,
come to us!
- A Navajo Prayer

A Buddhist Prayer

May all the buddha-realms of the ten directions
Remain forever vast and completely pure,
May the world be completely filled with buddhas
who have attained illumination under sacred trees,
And may they all be surrounded by bodhisattvas.
May all living beings in the ten directions
Always abide in health and joy.
May they live in accord with the way of Dharma
And may their every wish become fulfilled.
By my living in the ways of enlightenment
May I remember my past lives in all my reincarnations,
And in all cycles of death, migration, and rebirth
May a sensitivity for truth be ever strong in me.
By my following in the footsteps of the buddhas
May I utterly perfect the sublime ways of the bodhisattvas,
And may I practice the faultless, undegenerating, stainless,
And pure ways of self-control.
- A Buddhist Prayer