Lenten Moment for Thursday 16 March

It is I who must begin...

Once I begin, once I try--
here and now,
right where I am,
not exhausting myself
by saying that things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches
and ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-- to live in harmony
with the "voice of Being" as I
understand it within myself
-- as soon as I being that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
not the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
      upon that road...

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost...

                    --Vaclav Havel


Havel was a Czech writer, philosopher, political dissident, and politician.  He was the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992), then served as the first president of the Czech Republic after the country broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.