Blessing for a grey day...?

Sometimes it really helps to remember how short, fragile and amazing life is.

Beannacht

("Blessing")

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 in to 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.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(Echoes of Memory)

What price connection?

This morning I stopped to buy a coffee at a local train station. As it had not been open all that often lately, I asked the lady why. She said that "the Railway" was going to knock down her premises to build barriers. Just another bit of efficiency, and little lessening of quality of life.

Do the Railways, "they" not realize what a cold world they are helping to create? A world where nothing matters but the kind of efficiency that squeezes the last possible penny out of people regardless of human needs.

And of course the same thing is happening in social work, teaching, policing....human contact pared to the bone, processes to eliminate the "slack"...but at what cost? There may be short term gains, but what about the true, long term costs to our well being, our mental and spiritual health?

Could there be a link with the rise in stress related illness, in crime and alienation amongst teenagers, in so much of the "uncivil" society we endure these days?
We have fallen under some kind of enchantment that sees surveillance, efficiency and rationality as a new Trinity.....but heaven help us if they replace faith, hope and love......!

The Blessing of the Missing Meeting

Today I was going to various meetings and appointments by bus. This involved waiting, changing, map reading....various challenges for a woman with the merest modicum of spatial awareness. The number of times I set off "just knowing" I was going in the right direction only to find, after ten minutes, that I was quite wrong would be embarrassing to admit. The whole thing could have been a great pressure.
Today, though one of the meetings I had planned just did not happen. That left an hour of extra time. A breathing space. The result....very little stress on my part. I could even regard the waiting as a chance to meditate, as inconspicuously as possible. I think I might budget in an "invisible meeting" most days. Just to help me stay sane.

Too much of a good thing.

RecentlyI started watching the News again. I stopped, almost completely, years ago. But I started watching the 10pm News every night. I am so glad I realized that it was not helping, me or anyone else! I have to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so what is the point of filling my mind with the world's woes just before I really need to relax? So I started to watch the 7pm news instead, so there is time to destress afterwards. Time to breathe in and out slowly, letting a cleansing, healing peace flow through my being.