ON THE ARRIVAL OF AN ILLNESS

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When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you find in yourself
A courageous hospitality
Toward what is difficult,
Painful, and unknown.

May you learn to use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
The new qualities that will emerge in you.

May you be granted the courage and vision
To work through passivity and self-pity,
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark invitation.

May you learn to receive it graciously,
And promise to learn swiftly
That it may leave you newborn,
Willing to dedicate your time to birth.

John O’Donohue
excerpts from “On the Arrival of Illness”

HOME

Home is where we start from, and it inevitably also determines how we start to be who we are.

There is nothing as un-neutral as a home. It is the most self-effacing laboratory of consciousness quietly shaping belief, expectation, and life direction.

The home is the locus of a poignant transience. In order to grow up, we have to learn to leave home.

Home is where the heart is. It stands for the sure center where individual life is shaped and from where it journeys forth. What it ultimately intends is that each of its individuals would develop the capacity to be at home in themselves.

In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is: the art of homecoming.

John O’Donohue
To Bless the Space Between Us