FOR THE ONE WHO HOLDS POWER

in

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,
Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.
As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,
May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,
May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.
When thirst burns in times of drought,
May you be blessed to find the wells.
May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary
For the stillness where clarity is born.
May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness
To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.
May your power never become a shell
Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.
May you welcome your own vulnerability
As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.

John O’Donohue

FOR THE TME OF NECESSARY DECISION

in

The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it’s time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul’s desire.

John O’Donohue

EXIT INTERVIEW

in

We sit across this desk,
but outside the office window 
stands a tree doing what all trees do 
and have done, many times each October.

We have no way of knowing 
if its limbs had grown weary, or what it heard 
to signal that now was the time, or whether 
there was any internal decision making 
that brought about the arrival of this moment.

We just have a tree out there on a grey wednesday 
co-operating, releasing yesterday’s 
prolific profusions, allowing the only life it has 
to be ordered by the ending of a season—willing 
now to no longer be laden, willing 
now to be latent.

We know this will keep happening every year, 
which has never once been strange 
for those living things who are always dying 
and living and letting go.

Lance Odegard