It’s my birthday today. Technically it was yesterday but since the pandemic and lockdown I feel quite free to play fast and loose with the space-time continuum. So we’ll pretend it’s the 4th February.
It’s been a great day, despite lockdown. I’ve had loads of messages wishing me love and a Happy Birthday. There have been cards and flowers and cakes and a very cool new friend called Alexa…unexpected joy.
I received a blessing for my birthday today. A lovely friend of mine sent me words by John O’Donohue…A Blessing on Your Birthday from his book of Blessings, Benedictus. He wrote this blessing for his god daughter, also named Heather…
For Your Birthday
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.
-John O'Donohue
To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings
I’ve been particularly touched by these lines
‘Blessed are those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss…
When desolation surrounded you
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the grey wall formed around you’
Today, I’m remembering my chief ‘looker’…my Richard…he opened a blue window on my life and celebrated me wildly on my birthday…he loved me into becoming who I was meant to be…my best self. I have the experience of having lost some of that self…maybe this is the year to look for it for myself…
Sometimes the gray wall seems to rebuild itself…the blue becomes only a splinter of light and hope. Other times, on days like today, the grey seems to recede and light and hope come in the faces and voices of friends sending cards and good wishes. They make the loss of Richard, and of me, the missing, easier to bear.
I am thankful for them…blessings on them…
