The Mary Stewart Collect

A woman who has had a tremendous effect on Institute life from local to international is Mary Stewart who, in 1904, composed the Collect for Club Women which is recited at branch, district, provincial, national as well as world conferences.

“It was written as a prayer for the day,” she told Mrs. Alfred Watt. “ I called it a “Collect for Club Women” because I felt that women working together with wide interests for large ends was a new thing under the sun and that, perhaps, they had need for a special petition of their own.”

Mrs. Watt introduced the Collect to the English Institutes and later to the Associated Country Women of the World to which organization Mary Stewart gave the copyright before she died. As errors had crept into the numerous re-printings, Mrs. Watt's son, Robin, an artist, produced under the authors supervision a beautifully lettered and correct copy of which reproductions have found their way all over the world.

Mary Stewart's professional work, like that of the Institutes, was in the field of education and youth. She was principal of the high school in Longmont, Colorado, a special teacher in a Denver high school, Dean of Women and Teacher of Latin and English at the University of Montana. As Assistant Director of the US Employment Service, Department of Labour, she was in charge of junior guidance and placement in its pioneer days. Later she was appointed Superintendent of Indian Education, representing the office of Indian Affairs in California. She contributed to leading American newspapers and magazines and published a book “Metrical Translations from the Latin Lyrics of the Poet Catullus.”

But it is for her Collect that she is known best. It has often been likened to that exquisite poem, “O Wind of God Blow On the great Japanese poet Toyohiko Kagawa. To Institute members the world over it is hope and faith and love, to guide them on the trail of their Modern Pioneers.”

Collect for Club Women

Keep us, O Lord, from pettiness; let us be large in thought, in word and 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.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straight forward and unafraid.

Let us take time for all things: make us grow calm, serene, gentle.

Grant that we may realize that in the big things of life we are one.

And may we strive to touch and know the great human heart common to us all,

            and, O Lord God, let us not forget to be kind.

–        Mary Stewart

Yours For Home and Country, Ruth Fenner, Provincial Historian, British Columbia Women's Institute