A prayer by A.de Saint-Exupéry


We do not ask not for miracles and visions, God, but for power in everyday life!
Teach us the art of progressing in small steps. Make us resourceful and inventive in order to recognize our knowledge and experiences, to deal with the diversity and sundries we are concerned with.

Ensure we improve in organization of timing, and give us the tact to find out what is primary and what is secondary. Let us realize that dreams do not help, neither with the past nor with the future. Help us to do the next step as good as possible, and help us to see that the current hour is the most important to recognize.

Save us from the naive belief that everything in life has to go smoothly. Give us the sober realization that difficulties, defeats, failures, and setbacks are a natural addition to life, by which we grow and mature. Remind us that the heart often strikes against the mind. Send us someone in the right moment who has the courage to tell us the truth.

We want to listen to you and our fellow human beings. The truth one does not tell himself, it is delivered by others. You know how much we need love. Give that we can cope and grow with this most beautiful, most difficult, most risky and most delicate business in our lives.

Bless us with the necessary imagination, to deliver a packet of kindness, in the right moment, with or without words, in the correct place. Make us to people who are similar to a ship with draft in order to reach out to those at the bottom. Save us from the fear that we might miss life.

Give us not what we want, God, but what we need!

Amen.

"The Invitation"

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for,

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk lookinglike a fool for love,

for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,

without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,

if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,

to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;

if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;

if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,

and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,

and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,

weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer -