Good morning, digital neighbors! Happy Saturday, friends and refugees, early birds and later dayers, conversants and lurkers, phamily, misfits and political homeless, freethinkers and outspoken curmudgeons, WSN curators and ADD irregulars — all you scattered souls across Locals and Substack. A very blessed and peaceful Saturday to each and to all.

Saturday is my day for sharing prayers or meditations, and I thought I would share one of my favorites — a prayer that has been part of my daily prayers for decades. At one time I considered becoming a Franciscan. I did some discernment with the Capuchins but didn’t experience that “fit-well” vibe while I was with them. I have a great love and fondness for St. Francis of Assisi. He is much more than a proto-hippie or peacenik. For me, he is that spiritual link stretched and pulled between the poles of radical joy and profound contrition.

He was the first known recipient of the stigmata, so deeply did he contemplate the wounds of Jesus and his own sinfulness. Yet such contemplation did not make him a dour or sour soul; it crafted him into a person of charismatic gratitude and sincere, radiant joy. Without further babbling, here is one of the best prayers for inviting God to use us as an instrument for good — rather than just badgering the divine with our “gimme” list. Blessed Saturday, my friends.

Lord. Make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, Grant that I may seek
not so much to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.