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Prayers: Ethical blessing

 

O friends and dear lovers, bless our hearts: comfort and purify them forever.

Voices of home, children, memories of the dead, bless our hearts: comfort and purify them forever.

Words of the wise, bless our thoughts: clear them and harmonize them forever.

Teachers and guides, sorrow and trial, discussion and speech, meditation and dream, confession and creed, bless our thoughts: clear them and harmonize them forever.

Motives of love, bless our deeds: strengthen and beautify them forever.

Uprightness and honour, resolution and courage, simplicity and grace, patience and care, leisure and health, bless our deeds: strengthen and beautify them forever.

Green leaves of our labour, white flowers of our thought, and red fruit of our death, bless the earth; bless humanity now and forever.

(based on Youlden, H. (1914), Manual of Ethical Devotion, 94-6)