I like to interrupt the war stories with other stuff, and as I may have mentioned before, I got a kick out of reading poetry on the ship’s main public address system. So I went back to poetry for this one. As for the prayer, if you’re Orthodox and you’ve been reading along with this blog, you may have recognized that I often borrow parts from various Orthodox prayers. They are, after all, the prayers that I pray the most often. It is a gift of the Church to inculcate a vocabulary of prayer that makes it easy, when it’s a habit, to bring forth prayer in one’s time of need. This evening prayer is largely the Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian. We are now, as I was then, in the season of Great and Holy Lent, and this prayer is repeated often in the Lenten services of the Church. It is particularly good at eliciting repentance and focusing our attention where it belongs: on improving my relationship with God. It’s so easy to get distracted by how everything and everyone else is imperfect and forget that I am too, that I have some things to work on. So we pray this prayer together.
Rudyard Kipling is one of my favorite authors. He was born in India in 1865, educated in Britain, and traveled the world as a journalist while writing the memorable stories and novels that made him the first English language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His works The Jungle Book and The Man Who Would Be King are perhaps the most famous for having been made into popular movies, though they aren’t his only stories that have inspired screenplays.
Kipling was also an excellent poet, and penned what is probably my favorite poem. It is written in the voice of a man passing his life’s accumulated wisdom to his son in four stanzas, and it is a powerful lesson. Coming from a man with experience as broad as Kipling, it ought to be. Though it’s addressed to a young man, its lessons in virtue apply just as well to young women, so don’t think the last line lets them off the hook.
If—
RUDYARD KIPLING
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
I come back to this poem often as a guide to becoming a better man, because the work of becoming a man or a woman is not an effort of days, months, or even years. It is the work of a lifetime. Let us always strive to better ourselves, to grow mentally, physical, socially, and spiritually into stronger and more virtuous men and women. And when you do feel that there is nothing in you except the will to hold on, know that God is there beside you even in those moments to help you hold on.
LET US PRAY
Heavenly Father, lead us by Your divine guidance and care into honorable and virtuous manhood and womanhood. Take from us the spirit of sloth, vainglory, and lust for power, and give us instead a spirit of purity, humility, patience, and love. Lord and King, grant us to see our own faults and not to judge our brothers and sisters, for You are blessed always, now and forever and to the ages of ages.
AMEN
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 