Tonight, I’m sharing an “Easter Morning Blessing” (but I think it works any time of day) with a few thoughts this blessing stirred up for me; I’m keeping it shorter this Easter evening.
As always, what’s more interesting is the ideas, thoughts, blessings, and biddings these words from John O’Donohue stir up in your heart, spirit, mind, and soul.
May my reflections and ponderings lead you gently to your meaning.
EASTER BLESSING
Written by: John O’Donohue
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey
“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. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.”
Blessings are powerful words that set apart ordinary sunrises, objects, or moments, inviting us to pause and consider their deeper, elemental, mythological meaning.
Blessings bless, instruct, and encourage. They challenge us to see our ordinary days, moments, ideas, and interactions with different eyes—eyes that find the mystical and magical hiding among the ordinary.
Blessings make something ordinary into something sacred. Blessings hold a little more power, not in the word itself but in the meaning and energy behind, under, and over them. Blessing words remind us that the sacred and the ordinary are only a step apart. The intention animates the words.
Blessings set apart moments, objects, and people in a way that pauses the forward momentum of life and says, “Take a deep breath, join this moment with your whole soul-see this feeling, this candle as unique and meaningful unto itself.”
“Let us look again.”
I’ve written before how much I like the word let. It’s a powerful, invitational, and grace-filled word.
Let is a word of permission and intentional engagement. Most days, I wander into reflecting on my life, and my reflections are not always constructive. This invitation holds a different intention, vitality, and meaning, “Let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry.”
Let us let. Sometimes, we need permission and a little push to let baggage, pains, habits, and old ways of seeking and feeling go. To watch them be carried away, like the smoke of a recently snuffed candle smoke that drifts upwards and quickly disappears.
Let us have the courage to begin again.
It is indeed a courageous act to begin again. Beginning again requires purposeful action and intentions to step across the threshold of what is to what could be. Beginning again means we’ve started and have been stopped. Indeed, courage is required when we know what the outcome might be. And yet, we begin again.
We don’t realize all the good we can do.
Sometimes, it’s easy to miss the small, meaningful good we can do in the tangled webs and urgency of many pressing problems. This Easter blessing reminds us to look at the smaller and deeper actions, thoughts, prayers, and blessings we can offer daily.
This Easter Morning blessing reminds me and invites me to reflect, look inward, and then live what I find outwardly with and for the world.
What do these words invite you to?
…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…
John O’Donohue
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey
And may it be so.
thank you, Amy ~ you have let yourself become quite wise :)
Thank you for breathing powerful meaning into words that I would normally "let" fly over my head!