Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air...
Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things,
Even hate, which crouches breeding in dark corridors...
We beckon this good season to wait awhile with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay awhile with us.
A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart. There is nothing more intimate in a life than the secret under-territory where it anchors...there is no heart that is without this inner divine reference.
Wisdom is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity ... Wisdom is the art of living in rhythm with your soul, your life, and the divine.
Fire is an intimate force. Whereas light is very heartening, it remains quite superficial. It touches only the surface of things. ...Fire, on the other hand, has the power to penetrate to the very essence of substance. Fire can go to the heart of the matter.
~ John O'Donohue in FOUR ELEMENTS: REFLECTIONS ON NATURE
...May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid...You are not going somewhere strange. You are going back to the home you never left. May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full...May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured. May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam cara.
~ John O'Donohue in ANAM CARA: A BOOK OF CELTIC WISDOM
...when destiny draws you
into these spaces of poverty,
and your heart stays generous
until some door opens into the light,
you are quietly befriending your death;
so that you will have no need to fear
when your time comes to turn and leave,
that the silent presence of your death
would call your life to attention...
to the urgency to become free
and equal to the call of your destiny.
~ John O'Donohue, "For Death" in TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
A blessing is a form of grace; it is invisible. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. There are no limits to it... For one who believes in it, a blessing can signal the start of a journey of transformation. It belongs to the same realm as the inner life— its effect becomes only indirectly visible in the changed quality of one's experience. Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed, there is now a new sense of animation and lightness. Where there was grief, a new sense of presence comes alive. In the wall of blindness a window of vision opens.
~ John O'Donohue,"To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing," in TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else.
~ from TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US by John O'Donohue
Touch and the world of touch bring us out of the anonymity of distance into the intimacy of
belonging. Humans use their hands to touch—to explore, to trace, and to feel the world outside of them. Hands are beautiful. Kant said that the hand is the visible expression of the mind. With your hands, you reach out to touch the world. In human touch, hands find the hands, face, or body of the Other. Touch brings presence home...
The energy, warmth, and invitation of touch come ultimately from the divine. The Holy Spirit is the wild and passionate side of God, the tactile spirit whose touch is around you, bringing you close to yourself and to others.
~ from ANAM CARA: A BOOK OF CELTIC WISDOM by John O'Donohue
St. Augustine said, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."
Our dissatisfaction could, therefore, be the admission and
awakening of our longing for the eternal. Rather than being
simply the edge of some personal emptiness, it could be the
first step in the opening up of our eternal belonging...desire
cultivates dissatisfaction in the heart with what is, and kindles
an impatience for that which has not yet emerged...There
should always be a healthy tension between the life we have settled for and the desires that still call
us. In this sense our desires are the messengers of our unlived life, calling us to attention and action
while we still have time here to explore fields where the treasure dwells!
Bring warmth again to
Where the heart has frozen
In order that beyond the walls
Of our cherished hurt
And chosen distance
We may be able to
Celebrate the gifts they brought,
Learn and grow from the pain,
And Prosper into difference,
Wishing them the peace
Where spirit can summon
Beauty from wounded space.
