[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11406]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  Lord God, throughout our Nation's history, You have raised up men and 
women who have seen Your goodness in the beauty of nature and 
understand Your essential purpose in the unfolding of human events.
  Henry Thoreau was an early American hero, and possibly a mystic, who 
wrote an account of his 2 years spent in quiet solitude at Walden Pond. 
What he wrote about early America became a classic, but he was an 
American classic himself.
  Thoreau embodied the early spirit of nonconformity in breaking bonds 
of social hypocrisy. By taking time to seek spiritual truth, he wrapped 
himself in the beauty of nature and sought escape from a world in which 
``the mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation.''
  He wrote: ``I went to the woods because I wanted to live 
deliberately, to confront the essential facts of life and see if I 
could not learn what life had to teach, and not, when I came to die, 
discover that I had not lived.''
  Lord, awaken America today. Lift the Nation above hypocrisy and 
enable its people to face the essentials of government, the essentials 
of religious faith and the power of transformative love and daily 
service to others.
  Renew in us hope, O Lord, so with Thoreau we might say: We live 
``with an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us 
in our soundest sleep.'' Amen.

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