Beannacht
(“Blessing”)
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.
~ John O’Donohue ~
The prompt for today was to respond to the poem above. Today’s word is ‘home’. I’ve been living away from where I grew up for almost five years now, in two different states. In Maryland, we’re significantly closer to our ‘home’ in Illinois (about 800 miles compared to 1500 miles in west Texas), but it’s still pretty far. Maryland looks and acts more like Illinois, and that’s comforting.
But for the time I’ve lived away, I’ve struggled with what to call ‘home’. The poem above talks about going home, but sometimes I don’t know if that’s my house in Maryland, or central Illinois. It can be both, I think. Not an either-or. I tend to see life in black and white; it’s part of my analytical personality. But I think it can be both. They say that ‘home is where the heart is’. Sometimes it’s here with my husband, and sometimes it’s with my family in Illinois.
Perhaps what this poem is talking about is our home in heaven. That is my true home, where I was originally born out of. I came from the dust, and to dust I shall return. I want my heart to always be with God, regardless of the physical trappings of this world. Then I don’t have to question whether it’s in the right place… it will be in the place.
mercies per mile 