'My thought today is a prayer that I composed years ago to help maintain my focus on what really matters in life to becoming and remaining as good a person to humanity as one can be. For those who may not believe in there being a God, the ideas and personal entreaties I mention are still relevant for the contentment of both mind and body.
Dear God, I accept that the good actions of all people will always count more in the Bank of Heaven and pay higher dividends than any material gain in any other human dealings in the material marketplace.
Oh father of all forlorn hope, rescue me from earthly despair and eternal damnation. Save me from my inner greed and need to surround myself with all things comfortable while others live in penury and on starvation rations.
Allow not my memory to be conveniently washed away like water down a drain, but instead endow and cleanse my mind and body with the knowledge and compassion that I can truly love and care for those I never knew; and in doing so, I may help them to live better lives so that they too can know satisfaction and help others when they hold a more advantageous position.
Dear Lord, please let fade in thy reckoning all of those years I lived life to the full, enabling my own happiness to suppress greater awareness of world want while spending lavishly and foolishly upon things that didn't matter when such precious monies could have rescued so much more and saved the lives of many who are now dead or still go hungry and in daily want.
Had I acted better, I might have rescued some parentless children, ill-treated pets, limbless beggars, confirmed addicts, innumerable homeless, a few of the world's starving, tortured and abused. All of this I might have done if only I'd given more of myself and my purse and less of my insensitivity, disdain, disrespectful thoughts and xenophobic values.
If only I'd spoken out instead of staying quiet while wrapped in my own blanket of consensual comfort? If only I'd acted more boldly instead of standing idly by when the meek were mocked and the weak beaten down farther? If only I'd been a braver person and had tried to stop injustice whenever I came across it instead of looking away when the mob shouted louder? Had I acted thus, fewer injustices might have taken place in my presence and another would have known that they were not alone!
If only I'd done those things, I could have truly rescued so much more, and in the saving of others, saved myself!" William Forde: March 9th, 2018.