THE GRASP OF YOUR HAND
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.
Heart of God - Rabindranath Tagore
Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Thursday all Wanderers to the WSN and ADD Irregulars!
Prayers that push us beyond the comfort of the moment are some of the best ones. While we all experience moments of weakness, who wants to be resigned to weakness? Even if we are diagnosed with a terminal illness and the time on the clock is now more concrete than ever, how we react to it, how we let it dominate our thoughts and churn our feelings is within our grasp and His grasp.
Words have so much power on our disposition. Words mold our attitude and light the fire or summon the fog in our soul. Tagore invites us to be fearless, conquering and winning our freedom even when we fail. To approach God with that attitude is to invite His grace to free us from our limitations rather than being defined by them. There is no happiness in defining yourself by the most tragic event in your life, in your biggest moment of weakness or failure. Don't ignore your failures, your wounds, your embarrassments, but don't be defined by them. That mysterious You is that semi-known but never completely that is often unexcavated or examined with compassion and courageous patience needs to be befriended. Prayer - Seek the Divine and be surprised by how the Divine finds you. "Grant me that I may not be a coward."
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
“The men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs. But the politician is waiting for it. He’s the pestilence of modern times. What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”
The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
The Comforting of the Disciple
Now the Beloved often came into the Garden both because of the great joy He had in the Garden and because of the great love He bore the Lover and the Disciple. Often He talked with the Lover, but the Disciple because he was not yet perfected in Love could neither hear nor see the Beloved, though he often felt a strange joy, he did not know why. Therefore he was sorrowful, for it seemed to him that on account of his sins he would never find the Beloved. So weeping he came to the Lover and said, “Sir, I know that I am a very sinful man and I much fear that though I search all my life yet on account of my sins I shall never find the Beloved.”
In reply the Lover smiled gently and said, “My son, when you first came into the Garden do you remember what sort of day it was?”
“Yes,” said the Disciple, “I remember it. It was dark and gloomy as if no sunlight ever entered the Garden.”
“When you began to strip off your rich robes,” the Lover asked, “what happened to the day?”
“It seemed,” said the Disciple, “as if the sun had suddenly broken through the clouds and the whole Garden shone with glorious and celestial light: such light as shines daily in the Garden.”
The Lover replied, “Know that the Beloved Himself is the light of the Garden, so that when you began searching for the Beloved even then you found Him, for how can any know the desire to search for the Beloved if He had not already without his knowing revealed Himself to him.”
So the Disciple was greatly comforted by knowing that although he could not see or hear Him he had already found the Beloved, and he labored the more joyously to do the service of the Beloved.
