So it's turned into a Poetry Morning

My Friends, I started today leading morning prayer at St Augustine's of Canterbury. We typically start prayers with a hymn, but there are options to use poetry as well and one of my favourite poems for Monday morning prayers is 'St Patrick's Breastplate'. I love the words, the binding of myself to Christ, as if I were putting on armour. Armour forged from the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you don't know the poem then you can find it Here in a previous post I wrote during the Olympics.

I then spent a good hour updating this site with the latest batch of poems from Patrick Rigg. I felt blessed reading them, several really made me think and all can be found Here.

I was also sent a link to Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss a wonderful poem that made me smile and really consider my current job hunting situation in a new and positive light. I hadn't read or heard this poem before, and I am so glad I now have. I am looking forward, and even heading off to Oh, the places I'll go :-)

So it's turned into a Poetry Morning, and I have been reminded several time of one of my favourite poems, that I haven't heard or read in quite a while, so I dug out a copy and it still inspires me to live the life I want to lead, and not to let life dictate how I should live. So let finish Poetry Morning with Rudyard Kipling's master piece 'If'.

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!