Blessings for a New Year

Our Advent book takes us through Epiphany, so we are still meeting, and I am still sifting through poetry to find something apt to share with the class each week. This morning I read from John O’Donohue’s book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us, and found a poem titled “For the Artist at the Start of Day.” It includes these lines, which I wrote into my journal:

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners

A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

–John O’Donohue

Yesterday’s email brought a new edition of On Being, including a 2008 interview with O’Donohue (well worth a listen).

This morning’s email brought me an update from Abbey of the Arts and I learned that Christine Valters Paintner has a new book of poems available for preorder. Click the link to find audio files of several poems from her previous collections. (“Listen” made my day!)

May your morning, too, be blessed!