Sunday Sermon

I was rummaging through a few of my old high school lit books a few weeks ago and found some favorite quotes I'd highlighted big and yellow. One was a quote from a fella named Abe...


"I do the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me wont amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference." ~~Abraham Lincoln

The other, a poem I had loved so much that I not only highlighted it, but wrote it in my own scrawling hand on a slip of stationary and placed it in the book from which it came. Something I use to do to remember things. Like if I write it I will remember it even after the ink or pencil fades. I guess it worked. To this day I can recite this poem quicker than I can remember my own phone number.

Invictus
by William Earnest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of fate
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gait,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

I think I was reaching for self empowerment and acceptance then. Every teenagers dream.

Do any of you have a favorite quote or poem that still sits close to your heart and speaks, even after all these years, to your soul? I have had many and always search out more for my collection.

So come, share with the class. It might inspire another.