"God, please make me a channel of your peace." The first line of the St. Francis prayer, popularized by Mother Teresa, bastardized by Margaret Thatcher, and cherished by those of us who have fallen through the cracks and floated ourselves back up with crack.

I just want to be a channel of the peace. The peace exists; I don’t need, thank God, to create the peace. All I have to do is become open and the peace will come, the peace is already there. Mother Teresa, one could argue, is a testimony to the principles outlined in this prayer; through service she conquered the lower, selfish drives that serve survival and the ego, and become a tool of a Higher Purpose, or God.