A MORNING OFFERING - Remembering John & Lisa

John O' Donohue - Jan. 1956 - Jan. 2008

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue ~

 from

                                                          "To Bless the Space Between Us"

John - Connemara

A Blessing for Absence

May you know that absence is full of tender presence
and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which holds
the presences that have left your life.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore of your grief turn into a well of seamless presence.
May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear
from and may you have the courage to speak out for the
excluded ones.
May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.
May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.
May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight
are one and may your longing inhabit its deepest dreams
within the shelter of the Great Belonging. (Eternal Echoes 275)

                                                     John O'Donohue

For Lisa

Child, Daughter 

Your death murdered me
 

I became a stone of grief

flat, gray, cast into a deep well

a weeping stone like the one the druids

placed on the altar at Skye

my life the sound of a well gone dry.

How could it be that an old French woman

from a duck farm in Lucage,

could reach into that well

after so many years, find that stone

and warm it in her hands?

Child, daughter

maybe I can bury you here now

in this new country of grief unleashed,

take your body from that snowy, treeless

patch in Minnesota and place it in a field

of eternal sunflowers that match your golden hair. 

You've always had the power to heal yourself --"...close your eyes and tap your heels together three times.  And think to yourself, there's no place like home."

Glinda, Good Witch of the North

I awoke from a dream on December 8th, the anniversary of Lisa's death, and I remembered that she always had to have her special deck of cards in her hands from the age of 6 months; she kept them with her always-- in the hospital, in the operating room. through radiation; she had them with her when she died in my bed.  She was buried with them.  An old soul--dear Lisa, you've gone home.  Here are your ruby slippers, my little Angel and a card to keep you company:

Tarot de Paris - J. Philip Thomas, All is Sounded

Heart weeps
Head tries to help heart
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love.
They will all go. But even the earth
will go someday.

Heart feels better, then
But the words of  head do not remain long
in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says Heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help head.  Help heart.

Lydia Davis

Angel - Montparnasse

"nothing is ever lost or forgotten."