A blessing for absence

May you know that absence is full of tender presence
and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which holds
the presences which have left your life.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore of your grief turn into a well of seamless presence.
May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear
from and may you have the courage to speak out for the excluded ones.
May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.
May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.
May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight
are one and may your longing inhabit its deepest dreams
within the shelter of the Great Belonging.

-John O'Donahue, Eternal Echoes
via whiskey river

office moon rise

enclosed in bricks and mortar
under the yellow electric glow
of our modern office sun
the day slipped away
in a flurry of emails

then in the distance
the moon rose over the horizon
ghostly white
in the fading pink of day

and slowly we all stopped
and came to the window to watch
transfixed by its simple beauty
shaken from our busy stupor
for a moment
the time clock stopped ticking
the keys stopped tapping
and the world was real again