"Keep us, O God, from all pettiness.

Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.

Let us be done with fault-finding

and leave off all self-seeking.

May we put away all pretense

and meet each other face to face,

without self pity and without prejudice.

May we never be hasty in judgment,

and always be generous.

Let us always take time for all things,

and make us to grow calm, serene and gentle.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses,

to be straightforward and unafraid.

Grant that we may realize

that it is the little things of life that create differences,

that in the big things of life,

we are as one.

And, O Lord God,

let us not forget to be kind!"

Amen.

Mary Stewart 

"Written in 1904 as a prayer for the day by Mary Stewart, a high school principal in Longmont, Colorado, and a member of women's clubs of town and country.  "I called it a 'Collect for Club Women' because I felt that women working together, with wide interests in large ends, which was a new thing under the sun and that, perhaps they had need for a special petition and meditation of their own"