Christ's Gifts of The Resurrection


Part of Christ's Gifts of the Resurrection:  Peace Be With You.

                                                                          Keeping Watch
 
In the morning
When I began to wake,
It happened again —

That feeling
That you, Beloved,
 Had stood over me all night
 Keeping watch,

That feeling
That as soon as I began to stir

You put Your lips on my forehead
And lit a Holy Lamp
Inside my heart.
 
Hafiz 
 
                                     Source

I have come to drag you out of yourself
and take you in my heart. 
I have come to bring out the beauty in you, 
and lift you like a prayer to the sky. 
~Rumi
 
For Love in A Time Of Conflict

When the gentleness between you hardens
And you fall out of your belonging with each other,
May the depths you have reached hold you still.


When no true word can be said, or heard,
And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,
When even the silence has become raw and torn,
May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel
And anger begins to sear the ground between you,
Before this weather of grief invites
The black seed of bitterness to find root,
May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,
To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,
Reach out with sure hands
To take the chalice of your love,
And carry it carefully through this echoless waste
Until this winter pilgrimage leads you
Towards the gateway to spring.
 
 
From Benedictus A Book of Blessings, John O’Donohue)
 
 
                                                                              Silence

A day of silence

Can be a pilgrimage in itself.


A day of Silence

Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvellous lute and drum.

Is not most talking

A crazed defence of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came here

To surrender to Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,


To Dance within

In celebration of Love's Victory!



 Hafiz 



From suite of poems by R.S. Thomas 
 BC., Incarnation, Crucifixion, and AD. 
 A.D.

But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence
we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-
writer, the bottomless ocean
we launch the armada of
our thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,

whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our
own fathoms. What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?



For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.


— John O’Donohue from “To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings”


 For Longing

 Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging - in love, creativity and friendship

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.


May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.


May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling


May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.


May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.


May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.


May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.



-John O'Donohue

                                                                        Image source

The Other 

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off, and a fox barking
miles away. 

It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake, listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless.

And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on Him
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.

 R.S. Thomas
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