What's There To Be Thankful For

1. Work Around Your Abyss - Henry Nouwen

There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You

will never succeed in filling that hole, because your

needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it

 so that gradually the abyss closes.

    Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish

 so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it.

 There are two extremes to avoid: being completely

 absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so

 many things that you stay far away from the wound

 you want to heal.

I found the poem above tonight, with hints from Parker J. Palmer's foundation for the Courage to Teach. 

2. It goes along with another from one his anthologies- "If" by Rudyard Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you   

 Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

     But make allowance for their doubting too;   

 If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

     Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

 Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

     And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

  

This will be the thanks you's of my day- gratefulness for words that have fed my soul. So this doesn't get too long, most poem texts will be linked.

3.   Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

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;

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

4. On Good and Evil by Khalil Gibran

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,

 and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.

Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.

And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

5. 1938 by Pastor Niemoller

6. Tell the Truth but tell it slant by ED (reminds me of the proverb- A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.)

7. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

8. Manifesto of a Mad Farmer by Wendell Berry

9. On Children by Khalil Gibran

10. Tattoo by Ted Kooser

11. Prayer for my Daughter (William Butler Yeats)

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned 

By those that are not entirely beautiful; 

12.  The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

13. Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes

14. The Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

15. No Man is an Island by John Donne

No man is an island,

 Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main. 

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.