Congratulations!
My apologies I can’t be with you all today in person, as I am outside Bangalore being with my family as our grandmother has passed on. Each of you is in my thoughts today.
Congratulations to each of you for having embarked and initiated your journey of becoming creative healers. It’s precious that each of you is following the call of your soul and willing to discover the gifts of traversing the unknown, by diving into yourself in the service of others. Our pain is shared and so is healing togther, as we make place for every emotion in the journey of connecting and accepting ourselves.
On this day I wish to share with you excerpts from my favourite Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donahue – for the soul is our inner garden that we are invited to tend to – this is not just our personal privilege it is also our duty in this lifetime.
“Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.
John O’Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher”
Excerpt from John O’Donahue’s book, Eternal Echoes
The real risk in this world has always been becoming one’s true self amidst all the uncertainties of existence. The “little self” or ego self feels that it can’t handle life’s uncertainties. Yet, the soul or deeper sense of ourselves is never simply defeated by the confusion of life. The knowing soul within us knows why we came here, and what we are intended to live for. Learning to live the life of the soul aligns us with paths of true meaning. While we are on those paths, we not only can survive the tensions of life, but we find ourselves able to contribute to the healing and renewal of life.
Michael Meade
I conclude with one of John O’Donohue’s best-loved blessings, “Beannacht,” (pronounced ‘bannock’) which 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 gray 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 curragh 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
John O’Donohue’s Beannacht
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