We’ve lost the art of blessing.  Blessing is an important way to remember the holiness of a place or a time or a person.  It is a way of saying: “God is a part of this.  God has always been a part of this.  God will always be a part of this.”

This is a New Year and it deserves a blessing.  That’s especially true because it is a year that is entered into with trepidation.  It is a year that dawns, again, in the midst of a pandemic and worrying attacks on our democracy.

There are many such blessings.  But I share here one that was written by Irish poet John O’Donohue.  It was written for his mother but applies to us all.

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

You need a blessing going into this New Year.

This New Year of 2022 is yet unlived.  May we enter into it with renewed care for one another and our planet.  May we enter into it knowing that God will be with us and that God is sufficient.

See you in church,

–Rev. Dominic