St. Francis Peace Prayer

I go very deeply into the power of St. Francis Peace Prayer. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Reverend Cindy Palas and I wanted to go into the St.

Francis prayer line by line.

It's such a beautiful prayer.

I thought you might enjoy it.

In meditation it came to me how beautiful and powerful St.

Francis's prayer is and expresses exactly what I,

You know,

Like I say I've done thousands of poems and I've never found anything that speaks so beautifully to service and peace as St.

Francis's prayer.

So I thought I'd just go over that and let some of the beautiful pearls of wisdom drop into the hearts,

Your heart and your soul and how it affects how you give and how you share.

We probably all know it.

I'm sure you've heard and probably said it many,

Many times but as I was looking at it again the other day it really touched how deep these beautiful words go and when we say,

Lord,

Make me an instrument of your peace,

If we just take that first line we have to look at the power of how we feel that presence is of the Lord.

I have had the experience of being able to feel that presence in my heart and in my soul and it's what's inspired my whole life.

It's what's driven me to write.

It's what's driven me to do what I do and to try to communicate in all of my books and CDs.

So that part of this inner communication with the power of the Lord and sharing that presence that we have as we do connect with the Lord is part of the whole key I feel and if we really take the power of making,

If we all could just become an instrument which means we are being played I think of a flute and allowing spirit to come through and being open to let that spirit pour through us as an instrument.

We are all instruments of some kind and putting out our own vibration and our own sounds and our own energy.

Sometimes we have different sounds and sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's a little different but if we let ourselves be an instrument of peace it means then we have to know and understand that inner peace we have with ourselves and sometimes that takes negotiation.

This last year has really shown so many people that it's important to be able to come to terms with what we are presented in life.

That we have to learn even though it doesn't seem fair that what we think is fair sometimes doesn't come into play.

That we have lessons to learn that we may never have imagined and it's been one of the hardest years that I think humanities had to face and at the same time I think more people have had to pray for others because there's been so many that have passed on and there's been so many that have had COVID-19 that have asked for prayers.

And so this year I've done three CDs,

This book that I'm doing through Skybee and an audiobook because I turn inside when I'm faced with trying to understand what's going on in the world.

So that has caused me to look even more inside and how can I do something.

And finding peace for everyone I've talked to about peace is really an interesting thing and our world and humanity has had to find peace in the last few months with what's going on in here in America.

Which means we have to understand that our unity,

We have to understand our oneness,

We have to understand that part of us that is all joined together,

Not look at that part we disagree with.

We have to look at that part that is the part we all agree with,

The positive stuff we all can join together with.

And in all factors of peace that I've looked at that is part of understanding each other and trying to find peace with people we may not agree with and may not have similar beliefs with.

How do we share peace with people we disagree with?

We have to understand their soul,

We have to understand their beliefs,

We have to make way and move ourselves out of the way and our own beliefs to come to the common understanding of how we all have these great needs for love.

How we all wish to be loved.

And we all wish we could have others believe us but we know that's not true.

We know it's just like well okay we know that's not true.

But we do know we all want to be loved and we all want to be understood.

So I think that builds a beautiful bond of peace.

The second line is where there is hatred let me sow love.

And boy what a powerful,

Powerful sentence that is.

If we could indeed find all of those and other beliefs and other religions and other places in the world and other places in this country who are expressing hatred and really find a way to sow love,

That love will bring out the truth of who they really are because we're all made of light and love.

We're all wanting love.

So that returning to that thought when there's any disagreement and when there's any problems and dislike and hatred,

If we can always just go back to love in our heart.

I mean I have found this years ago when I'm having an intense disagreement or experiencing something that's painful,

I go back and I say inside love,

Love,

Love.

I let that be my mantra.

Love,

Love.

And breathing helps too.

Just breathing and just allowing that love to be present even if you can't say it because the last someone who's sharing words of hate with you wants to hear is say I love you.

But if you feel it and if you express it and if you then really go to the oh no,

No,

No,

No,

No,

Which is I love you,

Forgive me,

I'm sorry,

Thank you.

It works magic as I'm sure you know.

You probably had some wonderful teachers of this.

The next line is where there is injury,

Pardon.

And that's an interesting one because sometimes we don't even know.

We don't even know we've injured someone.

There's so many people who are sensitive and may not like what we do and what we say or what we even live like.

You know it's very interesting.

We are blessed sometimes and I say a thing every morning,

Lord reveal what needs to be revealed.

And boy when that comes out it's like I don't know if I really wanted to know that.

It's like well yeah,

You ask,

Reveal reveal what needs to be revealed.

And sometimes it has been.

You know something that I didn't realize that had been done that needs to be made peace with,

That needs a healing.

And that is so deep too.

I mean you get to a certain age in life and you see a lot of people passing on.

You go wow maybe time now.

It may be time now to go through that forgiveness practice,

Right?

And that's part of this as well.

Where there is doubt,

Faith.

And I think some people unfortunately have seen what has happened with COVID-19 this year.

And I've seen some people say well how could God do this?

How could God bring about something that was this awful?

And it has caused doubt in so many people's lives.

And some people when they lose a loved one and it doesn't seem fair,

They do have doubts.

When they have a business that's gone out of business because they haven't been able to survive this year.

That goes so deep.

I mean that goes so deep when we may not even know the pain and the doubt they're going through.

And that's where faith comes in.

And faith is such a great great gift.

Oh my gosh.

But to have faith you have to sometimes experience and have the bigger picture where you can look back over your life when you were going through times when you didn't know what was going to happen and you didn't know how you'd get through.

But you got through.

You got through somehow.

You got through when you didn't think there was any way you could get through.

And that brings if you look at those moments in your life then you can experience,

Wow yeah what brought me through was some grace there.

I mean I don't know how I could have gotten through that myself.

I had a very difficult marriage where I was going in an abusive relationship and it was hell and I got through it somehow.

And it was because of my faith that I was able to get through.

And it was because I was able to turn to God inside and ask for help.

And it gets you through even if you may not know how.

Just believing that it can.

Oh my gosh how powerful.

And the next one again works for this year where there is despair,

Hope.

And I think this year we've had so much despair from people.

And I think at Christmas time in this year hope is so important.

I wrote a CD on hope and I that was before COVID-19.

But I wrote a CD on hope.

But I was seeing so many people needing hope.

And I just did an interview with Amy Hanaley Gilliam.

She did a beautiful Christmas song,

Hope for Christmas.

And that hope,

That hope is the light that we need to get through in times of darkness.

And we're nearing solstice time,

It's getting darker earlier.

This is the time we bring more light,

We bring more hope and we allow that hope to see us through.

And we don't know how we're going to get through that hope.

Makes all the difference in the world.

And this next one fits for this time of year as well.

And this year where there is darkness,

Light.

I have experienced light from meditation and going inside and oh my gosh the light,

The light is so beautiful and so powerful.

We all have this light.

We see that light in each other's eyes.

We see that light in our souls.

We see that light that brings us through in the darkest of times.

And so when there's darkness and the world is in despair,

This is when we need to put our light out to the world.

This is when we need to shine our light brighter than ever to those in need,

To those in the hospital,

To those who are the doctors,

The ones on the first and front lines,

The nurses.

They all can use our light and our love.

And the last one in this section is where there's sadness,

Joy.

And again we've seen so many people sad,

So many people in despair,

So many people in darkness.

And to be able to even say joyous Christmas feels like how can we say this?

You know,

How I mean and saying have a joyous day seems like wow is that going to insult some people?

Are they going to get mad?

How can we dare to say feel joy when there's so many people just struggling?

You brought up a lovely thing in the beginning of this meeting with happiness and I was so glad to see that because a little smile and a little happiness spreads more happiness and more joy.

And if you allow yourself to feel joy,

You can share that joy and you can smile at someone else and you can bring them that smile that might turn their whole day around.

So yes,

Where there's sadness,

Joy,

Aloha does this,

Sharing that aloha.

And the next section I think is definitely so powerful for people in Rotary because this is what you do.

Oh divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console.

And I think some of you might have found when we're in our time of thinking woe is me and it can happen a lot.

What happens when you go out there and try to console someone else?

It could be a family member,

It could be someone in the hospital,

It could be someone on Facebook.

When you share and try to console someone else,

Something switches off inside of you which is a self-pity.

Something switches and you instead realize this person needs some consoling and it changes your whole energy field.

It changes the way you think.

It brings out compassion and it brings out gratitude from the other person.

And the next one is to so I'm that you know again oh divine divine master grant that I may not seek to be understood as to understand.

And this is so powerful because our ego wants us to be understood.

Our ego wants us to be loved.

Our ego wants us to be liked.

We want that for ourselves and it's totally understandable.

But when there's someone else that wants to be understood,

Can we step outside of our ego and put that aside and take a moment to really listen,

To really understand someone else's story,

To really just open up your heart a little bit,

To try to feel what that other person's trying to really express in probably such a limited way.

It's very hard to express what's in our soul.

It's very hard to express the pain we're feeling.

But if we can just try to understand,

That can really change someone's life.

And then to be loved,

Try not to be loved as much as to love.

And again we all want to be loved so much that a lot of us not even realizing it are working hard to be loved.

But if we just love regardless,

If we just love someone for who they really are,

And if we can really see that person wants to be loved and in some way be able to let them know they are loved,

That unconditional love you get from God.

And then four,

It is in giving that we receive and that's the truth.

How many times some of you have given something to someone and by giving something you felt better.

And it is by pardoning that we are pardoned and it isn't dying that we are born to eternal life.

And I just thought that that could be a very powerful gift that we're given when we find someone like Saint Francis who was able to share those words that's lasted hundreds of years.

So I don't think I can really add some of my poems that would say more than that right now.

So I just want to say thank you for listening and that there's these resources that we all have which is the understanding,

The love,

The pardoning,

The forgiveness that we can all put to work every day in our life and a lot of that is just expressed in our Aloha.

Reviews

Really inspiring and helpful. Thank you

♥️♥️♥️♥️ thanks for posting