And we pray in gratitude for the blessings of this year in the words of Rabindranath Tagore:
Loving God,
You have made us known to friends whom we knew not.
You have given us seats in homes not our own.
You have brought the distant near and made a brother/sister of the stranger.
We are uneasy at heart when we have to leave our accustomed shelter;
We forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there also you abide.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever you lead us…
You link our hearts with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.
When one knows You, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.
Oh, grant us our prayer that we may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the Many.
(Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, # 63, 1913.)
