a lovely dinner grace from last year’s mapgie girl summer zine.

Visit more Sacred Life bloggers or join the journey, click here.

Our solstice fire from last summer. Photo by madgiddy.

May light dominate your life in these coming days.
May the moments of darkness be far outnumbered by the presence of light.

When you next gather around the table in your homes may you remember light, and love, and the sun.

May these moments of holy time help us all to remember that the world spins, and the tide turns and the nights grow shorter – and regardless of our will or our work, the gift of Light Returning happens over and over and over again.

May the blessing of light be upon you –
Light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great fire,
So that stranger and friend may come and warm themselves at it.

-a traditional Celtic blessing

The front porch of our Seattle home.

click watch a joyful romp

mother’s prayer #105

may my children for always
feel this at home in
their holy, beautiful bodies.
amen.

May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.

(An Irish blessing from an Irish lass. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!)

One year in college, a couple decades ago, my girlfriends and I decided to wear black on Valentines’ Day. We were all boyfriendless at the time, and Spring had hit early so couples were coming out the dorms like moths from a wardrobe.

Then, many years later, a professor of mine asked me my story. I told her all the basics: where I grew up, what my undergraduate degree was in, when I got married. When she asked me how old I was when I got married, and the age “23″ came out of my mouth, this wise woman nodded her head and said, “Oh, so you’ve never been single.”

No, I have never been single. I went straight from a small Methodist college, where (almost) everyone was not so much single as just not-married-yet; on to graduation; and then straight to “Here Comes the Bride.” I never lived a day in the life as a single gal.

But she had, my 50-something thesis advisor, and many of my girlfriends have as well–either as women who have not married, or who have married and are single again. And aside from marriage, there’s also the reality of girlfriends who have had long-term partners and common law unions, and then found themselves by choice or by circumstance on the single side of the chart once again.

These women do not live lives of bereavement. They are not bereft. And whether they are single by choice or by circumstance, all of them have built lives that are as full and rich as any woman with a ring on her left hand and someone else’s clothes in her closet.

So every year, on Valentine’s Day, I remember that year in protest black, and that a-ha moment with my professor, and it prompts me to post this blessing. I wrote it out of love for St. Lucy, for my single friends, and for the passionate heart of St. Valentine. If you are single, I hope it is a gift to you today. Thank you for living lives of admiration, and for putting up with all of us who go all gooey under the influence of paper hearts.

With Love and Respect,

Rachelle

My friend and fellow writing group member, Christine Paintner of Abbey of the Arts has a wonderful new journal: Praying with the Elements, Reflections in Word and Image. This full-color glossy wonder is small enough to tuck into your journal and beautiful enough to feed your soul through all four seasons. Celtic spirituality emerges in the form of photographs, poems, essays, and journal questions. Some of my favorite things in the journal are Christine’s original Celtic knot works and colored illustrations. (I’m particularly fond of the turtle on page 22.)

Praying with the Elements connects you to the soulfulness of the created order: wind, water, fire, and earth. Today, I’m soaking in the reflection questions for ‘water,’ my favorite of which is:

“What are the places in your life of ebbing and rising? “

With all the thoughts of moving overseas and the requisite ending and beginnings that go with that, I find this question to be very timely.

You can take Praying with the Elements along with you on your journey. Christine has one waiting just for you here.

I’m off now to sail the seven seas — well, at least to cruise the Copenhagen canal on a guided tour boat. I leave you with this lovely water-themed blessing from the journal:

“Blessings of water be upon you.
May you be carried by the flow of the great river of life.
May you discover a hidden spring within you, gushing forth,
May you be carried to the shores of the sacred and renewed.”

A blessing today from my other life as the Urban Abbess. Happy Valentine’s Day!