Removal of "what is"

After being away from my normal routine for a time, I have a renewed appreciation for the everyday. Removal of “what is” has a way of waking me and us.

One of the reasons I was away from my everyday happenings was for travel, and that change of pace included the gift of both providing some expansive experiences and of reminding me that my ‘ordinary’ moments are also good.

The other reason I was away with to be with family during a devastating loss – the sudden death of my brother-in-law – a situation that feels near impossible to see any gift in yet. So for July's wellness thought I don’t really have it in me to offer much by way of encouragement toward wellness (except possibly to reflect, as I alluded to in the first sentences, on what and who, in this moment, we might embrace as gift?). Rather, I offer these words from John O’Donohue’s “To Bless the Space Between Us” in honor of Brent.

On the Death of the Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss, / You dwell in that safe place in our hearts / Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn / Brightening over our lives, / Awakening beneath the dark / A further adventure of color.

The sound of your voice / Found for us / A new music / That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze / Quickened in the joy of its being; / You placed smiles like flowers / On the altar of the heart. / Your mind always sparkled / With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief, / Your spirit was alive, awake, complete.

We look toward each other no longer / From the old distance of our names; / Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath, / As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes, / We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face, / Smiling back at us from within everything / To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory, / Where we would grow lonely without you.

You would want us to find you in presence, / Beside us when beauty brightens, / When kindness glows / And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth, / Darkest winter has turned to spring; / May this dark grief flower with hope / In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us: / To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love / Until we see your beautiful face again / In that land where there is no more separation, / Where all tears will be wiped from our mind, / And were we will never lose you again.

- John O’Donohue

May we all find our beloved passed-away ones “in presence, beside us when beauty brightens, when kindness glows” and allow them to inspire us to enter each day with a generous heart and serve the call of courage and love.