For a Friend

I learned this week that an old friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 6 months to live. This is not a person with whom I've had a close friendship, but still this news felt like a blow to my very center. My thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family; my thoughts and prayers also go within my soul. Life is so very short. There isn't enough time ever to let yourself be sad or miserable. Why does it take this kind of devastating news to remember that? For this friend, a bit of a blessing from my favorite, John O'Donohue's, To Bless This Space Between Us...

"Now is the time of dark invitation
Beyond a frontier you did not expect,
Abruptly your old life seems distant....

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds...

May you be granted the courage and vision
To work through passivity and self-pity,
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark invitation..."