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This is the heart of our civic culture:
hand reaching out to hand, to touch
and help another. All the rest--
pretences of power and prejudice,
getting and hoarding, acting and affecting--
are incidental, mere posturing,
diversions that discredit and move us away
from our true calling to serve.
Find me a man who knows his heart,
and there I will build my church.
Find me a strong woman who is
at peace with her soul, and the future
of the world will rest secure.
The simplest touch is strongest;
the most gentle movement
is the most powerful; we grow
not by adding all to our own accounts,
but by reaching out to give it all away
(if need be) in service to humanity.
Then it is, we will find ourselves so blest.
Then it is, we will be free at last:
free of the need to control the tide,
to command the waves to stop, the current
to reverse itself and flow according
to our own puny plans (as if it would!).
Then we will sleep deep, in peace, in love
with life; and life sweeps forward, and we
along with it, flowing toward our destiny.
With few gold coins to show for it, perhaps;
but with a deep knowing, a true sense
that we have been here, that we have lived,
that we have been kind and gentle to one another.
jbs
6/11/01 - 12/8/02
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