The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-12
Prayer or Out Side
By DIR. rRANR CRANE

Lord, let me have the courage to ask Thee for the things want. Deliver me from the elamping fear that makes men continually pray for things they only think they ought to want. S, z@:'
 Let every pagan lust for light and heat rise from my soul to Thee unashamed.
 l want more money, more beauty, more brains, more personal dynamic, more spirit ual vigor. From the whole ocean of my soul and-body this craving for power goes up like an exhalation.
 I want women to smile on me and give evidence that they. are drawn to me.
 I want men to be glad because of me- their faces to light up when appear. I want to be noticed, deferred to, praised.
 I. want good luck, that the falling tree misses me- the stray shot passes me by, the accident leaves me unscarfed
 I want pleasant surprises. and no disap- pointments health, and nosickness pleasures and no pain.
 I want my soul and my body to be friend ly, one with the other, and that these alter hating levers. and chills of conscience cease. l want poise and no more inner moral war.
 l want some sort of philosophy of life that is adjusted to the facts of life.
 I want to believe things that are so, and not to- be, forever screving myself up into faith. ts}hi& .ssS53f
 I want to live up to all my opportunities of personal expression. want the right to forth my own opinions, and of following my own tastes, @ Y
 Deliver me from this world and all it's conventional dominancies. ]
 Let me be obscure enough to wear the clothes please, talk as please, and kiss the woman I please.
 Save me from the galling chains of promi- hence.
 Save me from the mud of success.
 Save me from any reputation l may have to live up to. 1
 Give me this day an honest doubt, wig orous, distinctive doubt, to cure the flabbi- ness of my faith: a procreative, genetic doubt.
 Give me this day some intoxication, not of drug or drink, but some sight or sound or upsurging idea that shall make me a little crazy.
 Sharpen my instincts, sharpen my pas. sions, sharpen my will, sharpen my reason deliver me from bluntness and rust.
 Take away all my religion that is not the high passion of a fearless spirit; make me ashamed of any, goodness that is moral ti- midity. @ --
 want my privilege of vagabondage. want leisure, hours of utter idleness, wherein my soul can sun itself, and be free of pur- pose, and grow.
 Raise the significance of mere existence. Save me from yesterday and tomorrows.
 Deliver me from ghosts. Strike the hand of the dead past off my shoulder. Let me be freed from ghosts of dead ideas, dead organ izations, dead enthusiasms, dead faiths.
 Save me from the torment of dullness, commonplaceness, boredom, which are inward mind diseases and not outward cases
 Let me preserve the spirit of adventure, of the wildness of the world, of the knightliness of the soul in a wide, unknown universe. Do not let the child spirit die in me.
 With Walt Whitman pray: o for something pernicious, and dread! Something far away from. puny and pious
 life,
 Something improved. something in a trance, Something escaped from the anchorage and
 driving free.
 This prayer I make, not as one of the elect. but as one of those the Shepherd men tioned, saying that He had "other sheep, not of this fold.n