By which we strive to live our lives

Keep us, oh God, from pettiness;
Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with faultfinding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face,
Without self-pity and without prejudice,
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Let us take time for all things;
Make us to grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses,
Straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences,
That in the big things of life we are at one.
And may we strive to touch and to know
The great, common human heart of us all.
And, oh Lord God, let us forget not, to be kind!

Mary Stewart

The collect was written as a personal prayer by Mary Stewart in 1904. She was just out of college and was entering her first job as a high school principal.

The first printing was in an obscure paragraph in Delineator magazine. A local printer in Longmount, Colorado later made copies for a local federated club. Mary Stewart wrote the Collect while in Longmount.

The first organization to use the Collect, or to print it in its yearbook, was the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. It has since been reprinted in many forms, in many lands. The Collect has also been set to music.

Mary Stewart said she offered the prayer for publication as a club woman’s Collect because she felt “women working together for large ends was something new.”

The Collect was not intended to be a creed. Every line of it is a petition, a prayer- that is, a Collect. A detailed history of Mary Stewart and the Collect is available from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Headquarters, 1734 N Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.