I come to you today, O Lord,
To give up my rights,
To lay down my life,
To offer my future,
To give my devotion, my skills, my energies.
I shall not waste time deploring my weaknesses
Nor my unfittedness for the work.
I acknowledge your choice with my life
To make your Christ attractive and intelligible
To those around me.
I come to you for spiritual preparation.
Put your hand upon me,
Anoint me with the oil of the One with Good News.
Save me from compromise,
Heal my soul from small ambitions,
Deliver me from the itch to always be right,
Save me from wasting time.
I accept hard work, I ask for no easy place,
Help me not to judge other who walk a smoother path.
Show me those things that diminish spiritual power in a soul.
I now consecrate my days to you.
Make your will more precious than anybody or anything,
Fill me with your power
And when at the end of life’s journey I see you face to face
May I hear those undeserving words,
“Well done, you good and faithful servant”.
I ask this not for myself
But for the glory of the name of your Son.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter; more and more, the word just feels true, and we’re in an epidemic of diagnosis. But when the bore and the charmer both begin to look like a certain American politician, and the American politician reminds us of the worst of what’s online, which may be what the whole younger generation is like, and it begins to feel as if a new selfishness has taken the future hostage and your dinner companion is not just dull, your recently departed not just a fake, but the future itself is narcissism ”” it raises the question of what it is that we fear, exactly, when we say the word.

Read it all (my emphasis).

O Blessed Lord, who by thy word and example hast shown us the meaning of neighbourliness and the way of love: Grant that we may learn to recognize as our neighbour every fellow man who needs our help, and to serve him with a love that is costly and unselfish, like thine own love for us. We ask this for thy name’s sake.

He went away from there and came to his own country; and his disciples followed him. And on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue; and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works are wrought by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.

–Mark 6:1-6