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A Couple of Blessings

We have used both of these blessings at some point on the course this year…

For leaders by John O Donahue:

May you have the grace and wisdom to act kindly,
learning to distinguish between what is personal and what is not.
May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.
May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself, building up and refining the ways of your mind.
May those who work for you know you see and respect them.
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence in order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you, may the graciousness with which you engage be their stairway to renewal and refinement.
May you treasure the gifts of the mind through reading and creative thinking so that you continue as a servant of the frontier where the new will draw its enrichment from the old, and you never become functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening, the healing of wholesome words,
the encouragement of the appreciative gaze, the decorum of held dignity,
the springtime edge of the bleak question.
May you have a mind that loves frontiers so that you can evoke the bright fields that lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends to mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you a true adventure of growth.

For the journey by Gerard Kelly (I made the title up – don’t know what Gerard calls it)

May God, in whose furnace faith is forged; in whose being beauty breathes; at whose dawning darkness flees, shine on you.

May the Father, whose love for you beats with a rhythm time itself can’t stop; whose presence in your exile is the promise of home; whose certainties are deeper than the cellars of your city; whose breath is life, breathe on you.

May the son, whose story is a mirror of your own; who has journeyed into darkness to find a key to your prison; who has dived the deepest oceans to find pearls for your wisdom; who has looked into your heart and found a beauty worth the battle; who has written your name on a white stone carved in secret, hold you.

May the Spirit, who has waited millennia to fill you; who shaped the word that moved the wind of the morning that conceived you; who holds the earth on which you stand as an artist holds a candle; who fully knows you, wholly own you

So may God the faithful father, God the scarred son, God the sculpting spirit journey with you

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