A Book of Blessings

My attention was drawn this morning to a writing by one of my favourite teachers, John O’Donahue. He was an Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher. He had a marvellous capacity for nurturing a deep knowing, a Celtic understanding of all living things including our places in the landscape.

His writings often focus on the many ways to give thanks to the world around us. I was particularly taken by his reminder to foster a sense of gratitude for “the gift of mind, to feel at home, in my life”. In reflecting on this, I resonated with how it really is up to me to wholly inhabit my life and make myself at home. This means to be present to my surroundings and enter into the life I have already created, not the future life. This does not take a lot of effort on my part. It invites me to abide in my life in such a way as to rest into it with ease and wonder. To appreciate that no one else can do this, that is, enter my life in this way, to settle into it and feel entirely at home with myself.

This season, may your life unfold endlessly as “waves of possibility are breaking on the shore of a new dawn”