A Blessing For Those Who Wait
a resource
This week, instead of our normal essay, I wanted to do something a little different.
It’s been very clear to me that many of us are stuck in a sort of waiting period right now, hoping for our soil to shift and support us better, or hoping for more certainty, or hoping for more understanding or less pain or more providence or less worry. I have seen it in recent comments and DMs and social media posts…people are wary, nervous, unfocused, and overwhelmed.
There is too much to process, and not enough capacity to process it all.
So this week, I thought I would share some words from a personal favorite voice of mine: the incredible Celtic mystic John O’Donohue. This blessing is from his wonderful book To Bless the Space Between Us, and I hope it will usher us into a weekend full of unexpected grace and a little pocket of peace.
Let these words be my benediction for you all, wherever you find yourself today.
For The Interim Time
by John O'Donohue
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of dark.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn. Did this piece resonate with you? Take a moment to share it!
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That's a lovely poem speaking to an unlovely feeling. It calls to mind "The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak" by Galway Kinnell, specifically these lines: "Our spouses weaken at the same rate we do. / We have to hold our children up to lean on them. / Everyone who could help goes or hasn't arrived."
But O'Donohue turns to the hope of being "transfigured," while Kinnell goes for the bleakest jugular at the end. The hope in O'Donohue's choice is welcome.