Greetings!
What a great way to launch ourselves into the new year! I hope you can join us this Sunday in Shelburne Falls for the first 2011 offering of an afternoon of contemplative practices. This month we're asking everyone to bring something inspiring to share. A poem, a reading, a story, a prayer, a picture, a practice. Something that brings you to that place of stillness.
I so loved reading this poem from John O'Donohue's book, "To Bless the Space Between us" which I received in an email from Wendy Rezzonico last week. Even though this is the beginning of 2011, the end of the year is not far behind us yet.
The End of the Year
The particular mind of the ocean
filling the coastline's longing
with such brief harvest
of elegant, vanishing waves
is like the mind of time
opening us shapes of days.
As this year draws to its end,
we give thanks for the gifts it brought
and how they became inlaid within
where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted
and the soul could see delight;
when a quiver caressed the heart
in the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
in forgotten corners of old fields
where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
when all was awkward
and the wave in the mind
pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
the confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
with light from beyond themselves;
and from the granite of some secret sorrow
a stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned,
for all we loved and lost
and for the quiet way it brought us
nearer to our invisible destination.
--John O'Donohue
let it be love,
Rick