The Prayer of Abandonment

"Charles de Foucauld is remembered today as a desert hermit and missionary, and as author of 'The Prayer of Abandonment,' a petition of radical faith and surrender." So begins "A Short Sketch of Charles de Foucauld's Life" by American writer William Woolfitt in his poetry collection Charles of the Desert: A Life in Verse (Paraclete Press, 2016). "The Prayer of Abandonment," without its title, is the epigraph in that poetry collection. Here is that prayer.

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

--Charles de Foucauld

1858 - 1916

To read more about Charles de Foucauld, click here.

Emily Dickinson's Best Poems

My Arrogant Younger Brother Roger

Brother on his high

horse looks down on me and rides

roughshod over me.

His haughty eyes and his proud

heart I must not tolerate.

In Memory of John Denver

Though I am not Prince

Matchabelli, nor was meant

To be, I can't seem

To forget you, John Denver.

Your "Windsong" stays on my mind.

Listen now to John Denver

singing his "Windsong":

Who is now reading this?

Here is an untitled poem from "Calamus" (1860), a group of poems in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Intended as a complementary section to the group of poems titled "Children of Adam," the poems celebrate "the manly love of comrades." Calamus is a hardy and aromatic kind of grass or rush, often called sweet flag.

Who is now reading this?

May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life,

Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,

Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision,

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.

As if I were not puzzled at myself!

Or as if I never deride myself! (O conscience-struck! O self-convicted!)

Or as if I do not secretly love strangers! (O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it;)

Or as if I did not see, perfectly well, interior in myself, the stuff of wrong-doing,

Or as if it could cease transpiring from me until it must cease.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

A Father Who Trusts in the Lord

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in Him.

(Jeremiah 17:7)

"But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,

     whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water

     that sends out its roots by the stream'

It does not fear when heat comes;

     its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

     and never fails to bear fruit."

(The Bible, New International Version: Jeremiah 17:7-8)