Gaelic blessing for the New Year

Like a feather

When you pray lay aside thoughts

that peck at the body and dive after souls

fears that give birth to needs

concerns that lay ambush to the future

mistakes that make poison of the past

 

 

When you pray lay aside thoughts

Of where you are and what you are doing

of your struggle to walk the Chosen Path

even your hopes to leave behind

a few final steps in the sand

 

 

Then pull from under you

what little ground you stand on

and fall

like a feather

into the hand of God

Rest there 

so lightly 

so very very lightly

that when you think about it

you will feel no longer where you end

and God begins.

 

 

 Centering Prayer Magazine from Snowmass Benedictine Monastery

A silent friend

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. 


The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

From clouds to comforts

You mustn’t be frightened ... if a sadness rises in front of you, 

larger than any you have ever seen;

if an anxiety, like light and cloud–shadows, 

moves over your hands and everything you do.

You must realize that something is happening to you, 

that life has not forgotten you,

that it holds you in the palm of its hand and will not let you fall.

Rainer Maria Rilke