May the Light of Your Soul Guide You
John O’Donohue

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never be a burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.

i promised to stop adopting teenagers, but they keep slipping into my heart…

I love these young ones so much it’s ridiculous. Each one has crawled into my soul in a different way, and while at times this process splits me open, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There’s a scene in the Princess Bride where a funny old crone makes a pill for new life, and she paints something on it croaking: “The coating makes it go down easier.” I want to wrap my arms around each of these precious ones and let my heart for them coat them like chocolate –one long-lasting dose of mama-love to help the new life of adulthood go down a little more smoothly.

I want wrap them up with affection. With warmth. With stability. With all the elements of unconditional love you can think to put on a menu. And then, when they are all warm and cozy, I want to drop integrity into the center of their chests, like a silver quarter slipping into a coin slot.

If they have integrity then all thier live-long days they will be the stellar creatures they are already becoming. Not integrity to the rules, but the kind of integrity that allows you to acknowledge who you truly are, and stand in that truth. The kind of integrity that is not beholden to outside rules, or your peer’s opinons, or because of ‘the way it’s done’– but because of a solid internal compass that will not steer you wrong if you listen. The kind of integrity that lets you live a life on the outside that is true to the life you hold in your heart. If they have that, well, they will have everything they need.

So that is what I bless them with, in my dreaming, in my words, in my living. And the old Christian mystic who married that witchy little crone in my soul says, “Amen, may it be so.”

“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid”
-Basil King

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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.

Many years later at graduate school a professor of mine asked me to tell her my life 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 been a single woman, 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 there’s also those girlfriends who have had long-term partners and common law unions, only to find themselves 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, I recall 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
______________________

I bless you in the midst of your singleness,
In the ebb and the flow of it,
In the hot and the cold of it.

Amen.

Tonight, our nights grow shorter and our days grow long!

We look once more on these earthy symbols–firelight and evergreens–
and remember God’s promise to our world:
That our Light and our Hope, will come.

The Words of the Prophet

What came into existence was Life,
And the Life was Light to live by.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
And the darkness could not put it out.

The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light, and we have beheld its glory, glory that only comes from God:

generous from the inside out,
true from start to finish,
full of grace, full of truth.

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.”

The children are playing at opposite ends of the cove, each alone unto themselves. Eden surfs endlessly, riding the waves on her boogie board. She is brazen in her surfer-girl two-piece, whilst everyone around her is clad in neoprene to endure the cold water. Cate, on the other hand, is more cautious, standing only mid-calf in the surf, half-wrapped in a cover up skirt, her toes never leaving the protective shield of her water-sneakers. Cate throws fistfuls of sand in the air, her mouth forming songs and fairytales for only the surf to hear.

I marvel that they are so good at this – being alone, living within the present wave, drifting on the ebb and flow of the tide.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving:
Thank you for these, your gifts,
which we receive from your bounty.
Amen.

A sample from the small-is-beautiful book of our rockaway memories.

The Day of the First Fruits or Shavuot usually falls in May or early June, but in this grey Seattle Summer we’ve only just now begun to reap our harvest. Cate’s been tending a little pot of green beans and nasturtiums on the playhouse porch. A few days ago our housemate Sharon came beaming in from the backyard telling Cate to go peek in on her pot. Cate couldn’t be more delighted as she scampered about the yard holding two perfect green beans, the first of her tiny harvest. To show our gratitude for ‘the fruit of the vine’ we followed the Jewish tradition of marking our first fruits with a red cord, marking them as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Like many of the ancient sacrifices held in the Temple, after the prayers and the ceremony (in this case the tying of a ribbon bow) we turned our offering into a communal feast, and I carefully cooked these two beans separately from the rest of our farmer’s market stash for dinner.

This past year I’ve been working on the concept of abundance, trying to embed in my psyche the idea that there is always enough — enough power, enough talent, enough opportunity — for everyone, If. IF we practice community. If we stop hording. If we open our eyes to the needs of others. If we live generously there is always enough for a feast.

Dayenu, it is enough.

A Prayer for Shavuot:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe,
who has kept us in life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.

This is what we read around the table last week at Solstice. I rather like it, if I do say so myself. :
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We gather around this table tonight because we have traveled through the grey season to return first to Spring, and now to Summer. We have made it through the storms and the cold, the wetness and the drizzle–and we come now to this the longest day, to this abundance of light. So we stop for a moment to remember our journey, to celebrate this gift, and to give thanks.

At this table we have a great bounty, the labor of many hands and many talents. And we have, as we always do, a loaf of bread and a glass of wine. To some of us these simple foods remind us to be grateful. We see the staples and we think, ‘Ah, we have what we need.” To some of us these symbolic foods remind us of Jesus; they remind us to value what he valued – the sharing of life and provisions, the giving of thanks. For some of us the bits of grain in this loaf and the grapes crushed into this cup remind us that we are all part of one great family, birthed of one mother, living together in unity.

No matter who or what is a part of your story, we all have good reason to be here at this table on Solstice, during this time of light. Tonight we belong together. Tonight there is enough.

So we give thanks tonight for Light in all her forms, literal and metaphorical, physical and metaphysical. We take time at the table to acknowledge the great gifts of Light that have been given to us—the sun, revealed truth, the Divine—and with our presence here we ask for an increase of Light and a weakening of Darkness.

May light dominate your life in these coming days. May the moments of darkness be far outnumbered by the presence of light. And when you next gather around the table in your homes may you remember light, and love, and the sun. And may this supper, this moment of holy time help us all 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.

And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
Like a candle set in the window of a house,
Bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

Happy Solstice