March 17, St Patrick's Day:  blessing

This daily meditation post came out of my longing for a daily celtic meditation.  I will share the wisdom I find from various sources of Celtic Wisdom, modern and ancient.

Today, from the great John O'Donohue, some words about blessings, one of the greatest gifts of Celtic culture.  From an article in Sojurner magazine http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/03/16/naomh-padraig-st-patricks-day-john-odonohue-and-blessing  by Cathleen Falsani .


To bless someone, in the most literal sense of the word, is to confer your hopes to them.
That's why so many traditional blessings begin with the word "may."

"May" doesn't mean "so be it." May implies that something is possible, but not a done deal. May hopes that God puts it in play and that you get out of your own way and allow it to happen.
John O'Donohue, the great contemporary Irish poet/philosopher (and former Catholic priest), knew the power of "may."
"The language of blessing is invocation, a calling forth," O'Donohue, who died unexpectedly in January 2008 at the age of 52, said in his final book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, published posthumously in the United States not long after his death. "[May] imagines and wills the fulfillment of desire. In the evocation of our blessings here, the word may is the spring through which the Holy Spirit is invoked to surge into presence and effect. The Holy Spirit is the subtle presence and secret energy behind every blessing."

St. Patrick's Day should be a celebration, one that surpasses the kind of ecstasy reached with one too many green beers. This year, may it be an occasion to bless and be blessed, a moment to remember the Anam Cara that draws us to one another in celebration and in sorrow.

From O'Donohue's Echoes of Memory

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.