May The Clarity of Light Be Yours

Well…I've been away for a while. Attending to home things and family and holiday dinners and school presentations and sick children and drawing excursions and a new computer, among other things. And now I feel, on this brand new day of 2013, that I can return a bit to myself. On the winter solsitce I fashioned this new winter alter… 

…listening deeply for the blessings and lessons of the season of darkness. Things are asleep, the sky is dark, the moon on the snow bright. I light the little fires on my alter and burn the new studio fireplace….

…beckoning to the light to enter my life and help me find clarity for the new year, the next turn around the sun. Tea is sipped and ideas and dreams of plans are swirling; the new year a open book. I wanted to share a very dear poem by John O'Donohue for this special day, given kindly to me by my sweet friend Ellen. May your new year be blessed always, in all ways.

 

A Blessing For
The New Year

By John O’Donohue 

 

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 gray window

And the ghost of loss gets
into you,

May a flock of colors,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you,

A meadow of delight.

When the  canvas frays

In the curragh 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 protections 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.