Blessings

For those who know and love John O'Donohue, a blessing has arrived to help ease the shock and grief of his recent loss. His posthumous To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings has been released.

It is a slim volume of his graceful voice offering its blessing upon the world and all things within it. Birthdays, death, marriage, exile, addiction - nothing is too joyous or too sad to receive a blessing from O'Donohue, patron saint of beauty and kindness.

Here is his blessing for the Artist at the Start of Day (and here's one from me):

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurts and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners.

A  morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.

May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.

Comments

[Craig Neal]

Many blessings to you dear dear Amy for your open heart and willingness to share so freely with us all!
Craig

[honey_b]

Beautiful!

[Lion Goodman]

Amy: It's great to re-connect through your blog. Well done! And thank you for that beauty from John Donahue.

Lion

[Amy Lenzo]

Thanks, Lion! It's great to hear from you, too.

Yes, isn't John O'Donohue wonderful? I've gone back to his seminal "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" so often that my paperback version is dog-eared and ragged; I finally broke down and bought myself a hardback copy.