Prayer...It Makes No Sense to Me...

      On April 25, 1982, had you asked me, "what does prayer mean to you," I would have said, "Lord Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace," "The Hail Mary,"  and "Peace be with You." 
     Formulated.  Off the Rack prayers ready for those wanting to wear religion on their sleeve.
     Not quite.  I had--I have--a deep love for each of those prayers.
     Without knowing his name, The Prayer of St. Francis, St. Francis was introduced to me by a Christian choir director in junior high school--in a public school, no less, much to the chagrin of my parents.  A Christian--not a Catholic--choir director.
     Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
     Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
     Where there is injury, pardon;
     Where there is doubt, faith;
     Where there is despair, hope;
     Where there is darkness, light;
      And, where there is sadness, joy;
      Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console.
      To be understood as to understand.
      To be loved, as to love.
      For it is in the giving that we receive.
      In the pardoning that we are pardoned.
     And, it is in the dying,
     That we are born to eternal life.
     My maternal grandfather--Ray, a man who abhorred anything Catholic--would be horrified to hear me say so, yet, his inheritance to me, "Don't feel sad when I die, I have made amends with everyone [with whom] I had differences," reaffirmed what St. Francis told me.
      Prayer.
      It makes no sense to me.  Words that speak such truth.  Words--it is in the dying that we are born to eternal life--far from affirmed in my childhood home, in my family--speak such truth to me.  It makes no sense.  Yet, they are true.