You need balance to persevere.

A circle comprised of weak spots will not remain so when in contact with pressure from the inside or the outside. Its shape will change. There will be a sense of top and bottom, front and back, leading edge and trailing edge. A circle based on mutual trust, mutual patience, mutual compassion is a circle that is strong on all sides, and it therefore remains a circle. Your lives, when they are supported by patience and compassion, become full lives. They become more balanced and less subject to the stresses that buffet your lives from time to time.

You ask for strength to persevere. You are really asking for balance. You are asking for balance between the pressures that you confront and your sense of identity. If the pressures are too great for your sense of identity, you are crushed. If your sense of identity is far greater than the pressures, you explode and you are no longer a circle. The shape of life becomes changed.

Continue to see your life as a circle with those all around you. Pray for balance. Allow opportunities for your patience and compassion to become stronger. Increase your sensitivity to your union with everyone else. Broaden your view of the circle to include all of humanity, and seek ways of affirming the value of everyone, even when you have disagreements. Then you will be serving as a hand of God. Then you will be fulfilling the desires of all religions of the world—the affirmation of human dignity and the place of that dignity within the realm of God’s creation.