"Lord, make me an instrument of They 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; and 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; for it is in giving, that we receive; it is in pardoning, that we are pardoned; and it is in dying, that we are born to eternal life. Amen."

~St. Francis of Assisi

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,

Came at the evening cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim-

That sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when he reached the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,

"You are wasting strength in building here.

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again must pass this way.

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

Why build you the bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head.

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,

"There followeth after me today

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been naught to me

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him." 

~Will Allen Dromgoole~