"make me a channel...."

"Make me a channel
for thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me hold love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope..." - St. Francis Assissi

I've been thinking
about this "channel"
I keep asking you to
make
of
me...

a place where
the river of Your pleasures
can flow without
obstruction...

ahhh,
now I see...
that all Your deep carving --
the honing away
of
pride,
self-certainty,
arrogance,
and me, me, me
thinking --
was part of the plan
to
make me
more
useful to You...

only a channel
can carry
waters deep enough to
buoy a sound vessel
towards the sea,
the Source,
the headwaters of
divinity

only a deep and wide
channel can
hold enough water that
one is cleansed in its broad
arms and
not muddied in the shallows
of self-absorbed
churning...

only a broad
channel can bring the
ferried hopeful
home to
"the other side,"
and
navigate the shoals of
time,
memory,
accomplishment,
regret
without
shattering the
keel

so, make me a channel
of your peace,
a fathomless passageway
for your
Love...

carve out all ego-based
debris

I now know
that
Your deepest cuts
make for purer waters...

I am not asking to be
treated gently,
to be pacified or handled with
lavender kid gloves...

remove the
detritus of self-will,
self-love,
self-preservation...

anything that would
obstruct
the pure,
clear,
refreshing,
transparent
selfless
waters of
You...

carve deeply
for
I have
no other purpose...

I
am
Yours...

"...that I may not
so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned..."
― ibid.