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A Prayer
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"Lord, give me the courage
to be myself today.
To live life as it comes, 
welcoming it,
and saying yes to everything.

You made me, Lord,
and made me human,
so being human can't be bad.
Nothing to be ashamed of.
And if you made me different
from everybody else,
it has to be because
you want me different,
and there must be, in me,
something you want the world to see.
Something that only I can give,
some colour to enrich life's palette.

But, sometimes,
caution mixes all the colours into grey,
mutes them all to monochrome.
I narrow my mind,
conform to some safe picture of respectability,
endlessly repeated,
leaving me faded, dull.

Lord, teach me to live today,
Help me to see
that love and holiness have dirty feet
through dancing joyfully about the earth,
hands joined in yours.
That life with you is whole, and holy.
that everything I do
can bear your imprint,
can be coloured in love."