"May I Live This Day...."

May I live this day


Compassionate of heart,

Gentle in word,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.


From Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong, by John O'Donohue

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..."

Angel of Wildness

Today I celebrated the Angel of Abundance at Musings from Red Bell Farm. Here I'd like to celebrate the Angel of Wildness. My spirit yearns for wildness just as it yearns for community and home. I find God in all these places. This is part of a blessing from John O'Donohue's, To Bless the Space Between Us.

"May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places

Where your life is domesticated and safe,

Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm."

A Blessing of Renewal at Easter

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you...be released.

May your fears yield...their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you..blossom into a future graced with love.

John O'Donohue

Benediction

"The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make his face to shine

upon you, and be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up his countenance

upon you, and give you peace."

Numbers 6:24-26

This was in my last envelope from Bev. I love this benediction; I always feel so blessed by it. Who knew it was from Numbers? I looked it up, and it's something God told Moses to say to Aaron and his sons. Known as the Aaronic Blessing, it reassured the people of Israel that God was with them. The people would know that because the Lord God 'made His face to shine upon' them that they had found favor with Him. When God turned His face away from them, they knew they were in trouble, that He was no longer protecting them.

Those were the days, huh? God spoke directly to folks then, making his guidance and thoughts very, very clear. I wish sometimes He would speak this clearly to me!