And This Prayer...

...attributed to the 13th-century St. Francis of Assisi, which Madame L also finds inspirational and helpful:

 

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.

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.

 

 

(According to Wikipedia, the prayer can't be traced back in its present form further than 1912, when it was printed in "La Clochette" in France. It became known in the U.S. in 1927 when it appeared in English translation in a Quaker magazine which attributed it to St. Francis of Assisi.)