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 For Longing by John O’Donohue

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.

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Let us step outside for a moment by May Sarton

As the sun breaks through clouds / And shines on wet new fallen snow, / And breathe the new air.

So much has died that had to die this year. / We are dying away from things. / It is a necessity—we have to do it

Or we shall be buried under the magazines, / The too many clothes, the too much food

We have dragged it all around / Like dung beetles / Who drag piles of dung

Behind them on which to feed, / In which to lay their eggs

Let us step outside for a moment / Among ocean, clouds, a white field, / Islands floating in the distance

They have always been there. / But we have not been there. / We are going to drive slowly

And see the small poor farms, / The lovely shapes of leafless trees / Their shadows blue on the snow

We are going to learn the sharp edge / Of perception after a day’s fast / There is nothing to fear.

About this revolution / Though it will change our minds / Aggression, violence, machismo

Are fading from us / Like old photographs / Faintly ridiculous……………….

Already there are signs. / Young people plant gardens / Fathers change their babies’ diapers / And are learning to cook

Let us step outside for a moment  / It is all there / Only we have been slow to arrive / At a way of seeing it

Unless the gentle inherit the earth / There will be no earth

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I am posting one more drawing today of a series of ‘Christmassy’ images I have been making since November, I think. Sometimes it seems like I have, since 2004/5, created a long trail of drawings connected by a thematic and emotional thread.

‘Temenos is a Greek word, which has no English equivalent, meaning ‘a piece of ground surrounding or adjacent to a temple; a sacred enclosure.’ Strike a holy grove of silence where you can listen as you long to be heard, see as you long to be seen, recognize where you long to be relevant, needed, and necessary. Sink down into your estrangement, and let the grief of your disappointment be the moisture that baptizes the seeds of your potential so they can finally break open. And as you are tending to your inner well, know that your work is part of a larger mission that is attempting, through our combined experience, to come into harmony. In other words, our individual well-being is also the well-being of the whole’. (Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home)