Wishing you a year ahead that brings opportunities for taking quiet delight in the presence of your own company. May you notice inklings of interest and curiosity that could only spring from the heart of your own interiority and may you find the wherewithal to follow them. May you feel sufficiently rewarded by this process to repeat it over and over and, in so doing, may you find that you’ve once again stumbled upon the sustaining force, the inoculating force, for living a creative life, an authentic life, one that’s rooted in the wellspring of immense resources that reside, and will always reside, within you.
The Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, who died just two days after his 52nd birthday, on January 4, 2008, wrote this poem for his mother on the occasion of his father’s death. I offer it here, for whatever the year ahead may hold.
Beannacht
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 into 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.
THE WELL WITHIN WORKSHOP 