Eleven  Years  Ago  Today

a Gift that keeps on giving

i  have  put  away  childish  things

I have put away childish things

And am become a man.

Hear me now, I have put away all the fantasies,

The make-believe, the dreams—I have let them go—

And the imagined destinations

Of adolescence.

The Lone Ranger and Superman

Are no heroes to me now,

And I am hiring no new actors

For the cops-and-robbers melodrama

That may still perchance play out

In a shadowed back alley of my mind.

But as a man walking the front street

Of my own city,

As mayor, priest and professor

Of my own nationhood,

I am responsible for its events,

For the honest business,

The wholesome enterprise and education,

The practical industry and harmonious art

And the living, changing forms of worship

That infinite in purpose

Proceed within my city and my nation.

I hold all this in fealty

To the Ruler of the city that includes my city,

In devotion to the King whose nation is my nation,

And I do all, speak all, see and hear

And am the very all of all I see and do,

In name and spirit of the King.

So is my state kingly and a fitting home,

A palace and a palace garden

For the coming in and the going out

Of Him I love by His own love

And truly serve by His own truth.

I have put by the childish toys

And left the playhouse of infancy

And am become a man.