Oh divine Master, grant that I may seek to comfort rather than seek to be comforted, to understand rather than to be understood, to love rather than to be loved. -- from the Prayer of Saint Francis
If those three things were our only goals in life, we would be successful beyond our wildest dreams even if we lived in a two-room walk-up, dependent on the generosity of others and the Food Bank.
This is one I fairly well know to be true from my growing-up experience. My grandparents lived up a "holler" in Kentucky. Neither was educated beyond grade school, my grandfather farmed the rocky land, my grandmother did all else...with ten children to boot.
She knew all about the seasons, as in planting, when to reap and when to sow, when to slaughter the hogs, shear the sheep [they didn't have sheep...just saying]. She didn't learn any of that from a book, this was lore passed down. She couldn't say how she knew what precise amounts of cloves or dill or mint, etc., to put in whatever she was canning but her pickles, her beets...ah, to die for.
But her one inner desire was to please God, and she knew that we only please God by, her words, "doing right by others." She did not seek to be comforted...she was as comfortable as she wanted to be; she did not seek to be understood...that'd be a concept totally unfamiliar to her; she did not seek to love or to be loved, she just loved and was loved, no seeking about it.
Materially, she did not have two extra pennies to bless herself with; spiritually she lived in God's light. There. That is the pearl of great price.
Thank you.
OBTW...do wrong to one of her kids, and stand back!...a mama grizzly could takes notes.
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