Love make me bolder – a New Year’s prayer

Chineselanternsnow

Love make me bolder. Bold to take myself less seriously, so to take beauty, kindness, mercy, more seriously.

Bold to recall, under the tyranny of all our applied technology, that we are still in swaddling clothes, still coming into being, that the slow magic of creation is still proceeding.

Bold, in the stricture of our visual culture, to honour the invisible, repose within mystery, and tend the garden of the inner-life.

Bold to delight in the success of others. Bold to put away vanity, false humility, pettiness, envy, resentment and their collective violence.

Bold too, to not be overly quick to pardon, or receive pardon. But to allow the deep alchemy, within the chaos, to form the flower of forgiveness.

Bold to be true. To never lie by speaking truth out of turn. To never claim truth outside of time or context. To offer, through every encounter, dignity through integrity.

Bold to hold things loosely. To release what constricts the spirit and sours the soul.

Bold to leave this room, this house, this earth, more caring and hospitable than I found it—grateful for the sublime luck to have touched another soul. And for this to be enough.

Love, make me bolder. Willing to listen with the ear of the heart, to stand under your gaze, and be open to change.

Love, may my actions bear you witness.


The old year may die, and a new one be born
That is bleaker and colder;
But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,
For love makes us bolder.

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from the poem ‘Bleak Weather’


9 Comments

  1. Stephen,
    Thank you thank you for this heartful prayer.
    Warmest new year greetings to you, dear brother on the journey.
    Alison

  2. Wow. I’d like to adopt this as my prayer, too. I especially like the bit about the slow blooming of forgiveness. Thank you so much.

  3. Beautiful, Steve – reminds me of the following:
    “Perfect love drives out fear” (John 1)
    “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and give your servants boldness.” (Acts)

  4. Boldness to put away the violence of false humility – I need the love of friends to make me aware this violence. Thank you for the boldness of this New Year’s prayer.

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