The Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi: My Past and Present, or, Spiritual Self-care for Today

When I arrived at seminary, I brought two documents with me, the anonymous, Norman, Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, and Thich Nhat Hanh's Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. Those two were what I modeled my life by, imperfectly, reflecting the kind of Christianity I wanted to keep, and the Buddhist precepts that best reflected my aspirations as to how I wanted to relate to the world.

My goal was to delve deeper into Buddhism, once I finished seminary. In the interim, the seminary library helped me keep my my sanity by having a large selection of Thich Nhat Hanh books. After graduating, my Unitarian Universalist tendency to question meant discerning whether Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition of Zen Buddhism was right for me. After looking at numerous other traditions, his Plum Village tradition appealed most in its profound reverence for the Earth, the primary focus on Peace, and that being queer was not a deal breaker.

Coming across a "Buddist Mantra based on the prayer of St. Francis" several weeks ago, I was inspired to craft my own Both/And prayer using phrases familiar to the Plum Village tradition. In these troubling times, I hope this might be useful to others, with the reminders for self-care.

Note: I need to add that UU Rev. Erik Wikstrom wrote a book called Simply Pray. It was a good manual on writing our own UU prayers. I rewrote the prayer of St. Francis to give it Buddhist language but keeping the structure, after I saw someone's version. I did not give Rev. Wikstrom credit, but it's where I saw it done first, or was encouraged to do it first. I had also collected various versions of the Our Father before that, trying to find something different, but had not thought to write one myself. The oldest translation of the prayer from the original French, which is out of copyright, served as the foundation.

Dear Thay, Dear Sangha, Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Taking refuge in the three jewels,

May I be an instrument of peace,

Where there is hatred, may I water the seeds of love and compassion, sowing metta.

Where there is offense, may I practice Beginning Anew.

Where there is discord, conscious breathing and walking,

Where there is error, mindfulness, to remind myself delusions and enlightenment inter-are.

Where there is doubt, return happily in the present moment.

Where there is despair, touch Mother Earth, remembering that so as seeds endure birth and death in each moment, so do I.

Where there is darkness, may I awaken to the light of my true nature.

Let me not seek so much

to be consoled, as to soothe strong emotions the way a mother soothes her child,

to be understood, as to realize the Dharma, Sangha, and Buddha are the way to understanding,

to be loved, as to cultivate a true love, a boundless love,

for I vow

to meet all sentient beings with kindness and compassion,

to meet suffering with patience and love,

to delve into the deeply into the teachings of the Buddha,

and to know in the very depth of my cells, the interconnectedness of all.