Love in perspective

"To Love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--- safe, dark, motionless, airless---it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, inpenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation."
CS Lewis - The Four Loves

Scholar's Prayer

C.G. Moule
Anglican Bishop of Durham, 1901

Lord and Saviour, true and kind,
Be the master of my mind;
Bless and guide and strengthen still,
All my powers of thought and will.

While I ply the scholar's task.
Jesus Christ be near, I ask;
Help the memory, clear the brain,
Knowledge still to seek and gain.

Here I train for life's swift race;
Let me do it in Thy Grace;
Here I arm me for life's fight;
Let me do it in Thy might.

Thou hast made me mind and soul;
I for three would use the whole:
Thou hast died that I might live;
All my powers to Thee I give.

Striving, thinking, learning still,
Let me follow thus Thy will.
Till my whole glad nature be.
Trained for duty and for Thee.