www.mindfulprayerdaily.comBlessed 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.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from the blessing, 'For Longing,' found in his books:
To Bless the Space Between Us (US) / Benedictus (Europe)
Ordering Info: johnodonohue.com/store
Connemara Spring Blooms, Co. Galway - Ireland
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www.mindfulprayerdaily.comThere is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul. In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualize the mind as a tower of windows. Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await your gaze. Through these different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity. Complacency, habit, and blindness often prevent you from feeling your life. So much depends on the frame of vision -- the window through which you look.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara
Ordering Info: johnodonohue.com/store
Cottage Window - Co. Clare, Ireland
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www.mindfulprayerdaily.comToo often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one's own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself and you can spend years lost in the wildernesses of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making.
If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more importantly, it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara
Ordering Info: www.johnodonohue.com/store
Co. Clare, Ireland
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www.mindfulprayerdaily.comEASTER BLESSINGS
"On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry -- old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling -- and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.
We don't realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren't put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously.
May the spirit and light of this Easter morning and the special spirit and light of this abbey at Corcomroe bless us all, watch over us and protect us on our journey, open us from the darkness into the light of peace and hope and transfiguration."
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey
Excerpts from his books: Walking in Wonder (US/UK) / Walking on the Pastures of Wonder (Ireland)
Corcomroe Abbey, Co. Clare, Ireland
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