The tipping point of December has arrived. We’ve reached a feverish pitch in the list making and can’t help but give our calendars the stink eye. The reason for the season risks suffocation under frantic feelings of not enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough energy.
If you’ve begun to feel off filter inside like I am, it’s because our souls need something other than what we are feeding it. We pour in a hurried, hectic striving when we hunger for a slower, meditative anticipation.
It feels a little like drowning in the shallows when we’d rather be floating in the deep.
What would happen if we just stopped?
Seriously.
What would happen if we turned our backs on the spinning plates a few minutes each day until Christmas to refocus on the WHY of the season?
I suspect we’d discover there was enough all along.
Today I’m inviting you to press the pause button for a few moments on all the holiday noise. Grab a cup of something hot while you unwrap a gift from my favorite poet and Irish priest.
His words require a slowing down. Allow them to minister and soothe your soul as you ingest the beautifully crafted language. Visualize the man all this Christmas hub-bub is about. Float in its deep waters.
May peace and calm be communicated to your heart so you can feel the true joy of this season. Merry Christmas, dear friends!
The Eyes of Jesus
I imagine the eyes of Jesus
were harvest brown,
the light of their gazing
suffused with the seasons:
The shadow of winter,
the mind of spring,
the blues of summer,
and amber of harvest.
A gaze that is perfect sister
to the kindness that dwells
in his beautiful hands.
The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,
stirring in the heart’s clay
the confidence of seasons
that never lose their way to harvest.
This gaze knows the signature
of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
from the dawn that dreamed our minds,
The crevices where thoughts grow
long before the longing in the bone
sends them toward the mind’s eye,
The artistry of the emptiness
that knows to slow the hunger
of outside things until they weave
into the twilight side of the heart,
A gaze full of all that is still future
looking out for us to glimpse
the jeweled light in the winter stone,
Quickening the eyes that look at us
to see through to where words
are blind to say what we would love,
Forever falling softly on our faces,
His gaze plies the soul with light,
laying down a luminous layer
Beneath our brief and brittle days
until the appointed dawn comes
assured and harvest deft
To unravel the last black knot
and we are back home in the house
that we have never left.
by John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us (p.119)
and get A Blessing for the Speech Pathologist,
a free printable to
help you remember your WHY
