Pray to Lose
"It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart."
- Mahatma Gandhi
We pray to receive God’s blessings
To ask for what we are missing
But often times we pray to lose
Moral lapses we sometimes choose
We pray to lose our arrogance
Our apathy and ignorance
Recognize we’re all God’s children
Unique but equal to all men
We pray to lose our deep anger
Cleanse our hearts of hate and rancor
May we learn to be friendlier
To our fellowmen be kinder
We pray to lose our stubborn pride
When we forget who’s at our side
Without His help and sustenance
Our lives shall be without substance
We pray to lose our shameless greed
Ask God just for the things we need
What others have, let’s covet not
Be grateful for blessings we’ve got
We pray to lose our carnal lust
Unholy acts, renounce we must
May we control wanton desires
Learn to extinguish prurient fires
We pray to lose our impatience
Self-pity, despair, complaisance
May we speak the truth for always
And renounce sin all of our days
We pray to lose these worldly things
We’re sinful birds with broken wings
Hoping the Lord will hear our pray’rs
And cast away our mundane cares
08-06-2022
Vic Evora
The above eight quatrains, although written in English, are in the DALIT format. While every quatrain is self-contained and contains a valuable lesson, the eight quatrains as a whole tell a story.
The DALIT is a type of short Filipino poem, consisting of four lines (quatrain) with eight syllables each. The rhyming pattern is AABB. There’s a controversy regarding its origin. One school of thought states that the dalit is Spanish in origin, particularly because its syllabification is even or pares (pairs). Hence, it is said that the Spanish popularized the dalit in the Philippines. Another view holds that the dalit is indigenous, but the friars used its popularity to promote Catholicism, in the form of meditative verses.
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