Ponderings for the month .......
If you lose hope,
somehow you lose the vitality
that keeps life moving,
you lose that courage to be,
that quality that helps you go on
in spite of it all.
And so today I still have a dream.
Martin Luther King Jr.
*
A Hasidic Tale:
Late one evening a poor farmer on his way back from
the market found himself without his prayer book. The
wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of
the woods and it distressed him that this day should
pass without his having said his prayers.
So this is the prayer he made: “I have done something
very foolish, Lord. I came away from home this morning
without my prayer book and my memory is such
that I cannot recite a single prayer without it. So this
is what I am going to do: I shall recite the alphabet
five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers
are known, can put the letters together to form
the prayers I can’t remember.”
And the Lord said to his angels, “Of all the prayers I
have heard today, this one was undoubtedly the best
because it came from a heart that was simple
and sincere.”
From the book The Prayer of the Frog
by Anthony de Mello
*