When I first opened my eyes this morning I was shocked to discover I had overslept by an entire hour on a workday.
I closed my eyes again.
And listened to the rain.
Was it on time or had it arrived early? I couldn’t recall the forecast, so I let that question slide.
And listened to the rain.
“I’m just going to be late.”
I reached a hand out to Bennie who was still sound asleep his own self.
“Why is this dog oversleeping too?” though he did stretch and roll over on his back when he felt my touch. Delicious.
Apparently, he was opting for more sleep.
We had both had troubled nights. He’d had a choking reverse breathing episode.
I had had a troubled dream and then slept sitting-up in hopes that an incipient migraine would clear up on its own.
No migraine now, just the quiet rain,
and the missing hour.
“OK, Bennie, we’ve got to get up now.”
Well, he thought that was a great idea.
It meant breakfast, which he calls “dinner,” and I debated the wisdom of my nomenclature as I watched him clear off the bed.
It meant a chew and harassing the cat.
Yeah, Bennie was all for getting up.
I was still ambivalent.
I hobbled slowly on feet swollen from poor circulation and numbed by deadened nerves,
straight to the coffee pot.
“I’m just going to be late.”
And the time passed, kind of in these half hour increments of tasks,
feeling relaxed almost like a weekend,
until eventually I found myself rinsing off the dishes in the kitchen sink.
I’d just called out, “SQUIRREL!”
which sent Bennie whirling out through his doggie door, the chase totally engaged,
squirrels scattering in all directions, Bennie boinging straight into the air like some spring lamb, as Louis Armstrong quietly intoned, “what a wonderful world,”
when I heard from deep inside, not so much precise words,
but the gentle Irish burr and rhythmic lapping
of this blessing by John O’Donohue.
And I knew I’d have to share it with you. Notice that if you are the least bit hurried as you read, the rhythm gets messed up. This blessing almost insists that one slow down.
A BLESSING FOR EQUILIBRIUM
from ‘Benedictus – A Book of Blessings’
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the music of laughter break through your soul.
As the wind wants to make everything dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.
Like the freedom of the monastery bell,
May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May a sense of irony give you perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May fear or worry never put you in chains.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the distance the laughter of God.
Friday, March 07, 2008
A Blessing for Equilibrium
Sunday, March 02, 2008
John O’Donohue, Soul Friend
Sunday morning once again found me on my yoga mat and listening to the NPR program, Speaking of Faith.
Before too long, I stopped my stretching and lay back down in bed with Bennie. Rubbing his ears, entwining my fingers in his fur, I listened to the radio.
They talked of beauty and revealed beauty until the tears streamed down my face.
It is strange to be here.
The mystery never leaves you alone.
Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts,
the silence of another world waits.
A world lives within you.
No one else can bring you news of this inner world.
Through the opening of the mouth, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul.
These sounds are words….
the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates.
Everyone is an artist.
Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue was beloved for his book Anam Cara, Gaelic for "soul friend," and for his insistence on beauty as a human calling and a defining aspect of God.
Your identity is not equivalent to your biography.
There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you,
and I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary. …
Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an on going process.
It is being birthed in every experience of your life.
Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you…
Patrick Kavanagh captures this sense of the benediction of happening:
“Praise, praise, praise/The way it happened and the way it is.”
Anam Cara
John O'Donohue died in his sleep this January at the age of 52.
His final work will be published posthumously, this month.
It's entitled, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings.
Beannacht, is one of his poems of blessing, which he wrote for his mother after his father's death. “Beannacht” is the Gaelic word for blessing.
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
You can hear John O’Donohue recite Bennacht aloud.
