A Collect for Club Women

A COLLECT

FOR CLUB WOMEN

　

Keep us, oh God, from pettiness;

let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.

Let us be done with fault-finding

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

Grow calm, serene, gentle.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses;

straight forward 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 (April 1904)

This Collect was written as a personal prayer for the day and without any organization in mind. It was written at Longmont, Colorado, in 1904, where, just out of college, Mary Stewart was entering on her first job as principal of the local high school.The prayer was offered for publication because its author felt that "women working together with wide interest for large ends was a new thing under the sun and that perhaps they had need for special petition and medication of their own." The first women’s organization to hear or use the Collect or to print it in its yearbooks and biennial reports was the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. This federation still considers the Collect to be anessential part of all club yearbooks.

(Adapted from the Handbook of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, Second Edition.)