Anam Cara

A tree into springtime,

May all that holds you

Fall from its hungry ledge

Into the fecund surge of your heart.

FOR LOVE IN A TIME OF CONFLICT

When the gentleness between you hardens

And you fall out of your belonging with each other,

May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,

And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,

When even the silence has become raw and torn,

May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel

And anger begins to sear the ground between you,

Before this weather of grief invites

The black seed of bitterness to find root,

May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,

To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,

Reach out with sure hands

To take the chalice of your love,

And carry it carefully through this echoless waste

Until this winter pilgrimage leads you

Toward the gateway to spring.

A BLESSING OF ANGELS

May the Angels in their beauty bless you.

May they turn toward you streams of blessing.

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart

To come alive to the eternal within you,

To all the invitations that quietly surround you.

May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds

Into sources of refreshment.

May the Angel of the Imagination enable you

To stand on the true thresholds,

At ease with your ambivalence

And drawn in new directions

Through the glow of your contradictions.

May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes

To the unseen suffering around you.

May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places

Where your life is domesticated and safe,

Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm.

May the Angel of Eros introduce you

To the beauty of your senses

To celebrate your inheritance

As a temple of the holy spirit.

May the Angel of Justice disturb you

To take the side of the poor and the wronged.

May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you

In worth and self-respect,

That you may live with the dignity

That presides in your soul.

May the Angel of Death arrive only

When your life is complete

And you have brought every given gift

To the threshold where its infinity can shine.

May all the Angels be your sheltering

And joyful guardians.

FOR LONGING

Blessed be the longing that brought you here

And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging—in love, creativity, and friendship—

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghoststructures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

IN PRAISE OF AIR

Let us bless the air,

Benefactor of breath,

Keeper of the fragile bridge

We breathe across.

Air waiting outside

The womb, to funnel

A first breath

That lets us begin

To be here,

Each moment

Drawn from

Its invisible stock.

Air: vast neighborhood

Of the invisible, where thought lives,

Entering, to arise in us as our own,

Enabling us to put faces on things

That would otherwise stay strange

And leave us homeless here.

Air, home of memory where

Our vanished days secretly gather,

Receiving every glance, word, and act

That fall from presence,

Taking all our unfolding in,

So that nothing is lost or forgotten.

Air: reservoir of the future

Out of which our days flow,

Ferrying their shadowed nights,

The invisible generosity,

That brings us future friends

And sometimes stones of sorrow

On which our minds refine.

Air along whose unseen path

Presence builds its quiet procession;

Sometimes in waves of sound,

Voices that can persuade

Every door of the heart;

Often in tides of music

That absolve the cut of time.

Air: source of the breath

That enables flowers to flourish,

And calls the dark, rooted trees

To ascend into blossom.

Air, perfect emptiness

For the mind of birds

To map with vanishings;

Womb of forms

That shapes embraces

To hold animal presence.

Air makes the distance kind,

Opening pathways for the eye

To reach the affections of things,

Yet never lets its invisible geography

Come anywhere near thought

Or the voyage-edges of the eye.

Air: kingdom of spirit

Where our departed dwell,

Nearer to us than ever,

Where the gods preside.

Let us bless the invigoration

Of clean, fresh air.

The gentleness of air

That holds and slows the rain,

Lets it fall down.

The shyness of air

That never shows its face.

The force of air

In wall after wall

Of straining wind.

In the name of the air,

The breeze,

And the wind,

May our souls

Stay in rhythm

With eternal

Breath.

FOR THE SENSES