Rightness of being wrong

 Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.

- Benjamin Franklin

Tecumseh Poem

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

~ Chief Tecumseh”

St. Francis Prayer

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, 

That where there is hatred, I may bring love; 

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; 

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony; 

That where there is error, I may bring truth; 

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith; 

That where there is despair, I may bring hope; 

That where there are shadows, I may bring light; 

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. 

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; 

To understand, than to be understood; 

To love, than to be loved. 

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. 

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. 

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

- St. Francis of Assisi

Invictus

BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Out of the night that covers me, 

      Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 

      For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

      I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 

      My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 

      Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 

      Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

      How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 

      I am the captain of my soul.

This was the poem that kept Nelson Mandela encouraged while in prison for 28 years. He of course was a political prisoner and had been sentenced to life for opposing apartheid. After his release he became president of South Africa and subsequently put and end to apartheid. 

While many people get hung up on the last line as being captain of my soul...I don’t. I take it in the vein that God gives us his spirit which is the unquerable soul. This gives me the ability to be unconquerable. 

The Road Ahead or The Road Behind

Sometimes I think the fates must grin as we denounce them and insist,

The only reason we can’t win is the fates themselves have missed.

Yet, there lives on the ancient claim – we win or lose within ourselves,

The shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow’s game.

So you and I know deeper down there is a chance to win the crown,

But when we fail to give our best, we simply haven’t met the test

Of giving all and saving none until the game is really won.

Of showing what is meant by grit, of fighting on when others quit,

Of playing through not letting up, it’s bearing down that wins the cup.

Of taking it and taking more until we gain the winning score,

Of dreaming there’s a goal ahead, of hoping when our dreams are dead,

Of praying when our hopes have fled. 

Yet, losing, not afraid to fall,

If bravely we have given all, for who can ask more of a man

than giving all, it seems to me, is not so far from – Victory.

And so the fates are seldom wrong, no matter how they twist and wind,

It’s you and I who make our fates, we open up or close the gates,

On the Road Ahead or the Road Behind.

- George Moriarty