A blessing for the journey

A very beautiful prayer that was recited at the Multi-faith welcome to the new freshmen at Stanford yesterday:

Holy Wisdom, in whose many names we gather, be our teacher.

Teach us to seek you beyond and beneath all the knowledge we pursue. In a world flooded with information and parched for justice, guide our learning, our teaching, our living with courageous loving. Train us to see and embrace those we too often overlook, those from whom our books may shield us: the outcast, the poor, the forgotten. Shape our hearts as surely as our minds around the common good, and help us to discover what is most good in all that is most common.

Holy Wisdom, be our teacher.

Teach us the wisdom of generosity - the simple kindness to make room in our lives for new friends, new colleagues, new students, new teachers; and give us the extravagant simplicity to know we need them as much as they need us. Make us perceptive enough to recognize the loneliness around or within us, strong enough to name it, and gentle enough to ease it. And grant us generosity of intellect - to inhabit our doubts long enough to befriend and follow theml to listen to those with whom we disagree long enough to learn from them.

Holy Wisdom, be our teacher.

Teach us the wisdom of humor and humility - the freedom to take ourselves lightly and the courage to live slowly and simply as though our worth did not finally depend on our work, because it doesn't. May we remember this year that life is brief, so let our kindness be swift and our perspective be broad.

Holy wisdom be planted deep within us and scattered wide among us, so that when the rains have come and gone, and the daylight stretches again to its full length, we may be found at the far end of this new year flowering with humanity, mercy, friendship and wisdom. Amen.