Wednesday, February 7, 2024

John O'Donohue: To Learn From Animal Being

Photo by Molly
To Learn From Animal Being

Nearer to the earth's heart, Deeper within its silence: Animals know this world In a way we never will.

We who are ever Distanced and distracted By the parade of bright Windows thought opens: Their seamless presence Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time Gone and time emerging, We manage seldom To be where we are: Whereas they are always Looking out from The here and now.

May we learn to return And rest in the beauty Of animal being, Learn to lean low, Leave our locked minds, And with freed senses Feel the earth Breathing with us.

May we enter Into lightness of spirit, And slip frequently into The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence Of our animal being Cleanse our hearts Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds

Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.

― John O'Donohue
From To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings


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