“Loving Spirit of Life, Thank you for this world where beauty so abounds, and for all our many fellow souls, whose beauty we sometimes forget to honor. Grant us the strength, wisdom, and persistence to keep beauty alive, and help us learn to shine with so much love and determination that any that seek to tear beauty down, will instead be transformed. Amen.” -Paul S. Sawyer
Keep something beautiful alive today.
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” (Luke 18:1-5)
When has persistence paid off for you?
Persistence often requires having goals that we’re working towards. Sometimes we start with goals that seem impossible, and have to muster all of our persistence to keep going when they’re far away.
What goals have you set for yourself?
“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.” -Judith Heumann (1947-2023)
How can you strategize to make change today?
Every day for the past two years, I have done online Spanish lessons using a popular language learning program. Each day, I learn new words, and new ways to express myself in a language I did not grow up speaking. Each day, I get a little closer to the goal of honoring my Spanish-speaking siblings and neighbors by speaking their language. And two years in, I’ve finally summoned the courage to talk with the parents of my child’s classmates. -Michael Tino (CLF)
What goals have you persisted towards?
