Words of Blessing: Peace and Shalom
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.
The weight of words
Revisiting former priest John O’Donnell’s mystically lovely poetry reveals the poverty of certain words. Words of blessing: peace and shalom. They can be diluted into a mere facsimile, like tea masquerading as coffee or a pearl hiding amidst thousands of pebbles. Too often, we do that with the English word peace. This past Tuesday morning’s daily Mass homilist brought the weight of words to my mind when he reflected on Christ’s greeting, “Shalaam.” Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid…” Read entire Gospel passage.
The homilist declared that the Hebrew word “Shalaam” connotes far more than the absence of anxiety or combat. Instead, it implies restoration, making whole, reconciliation with God, thus conferring health and prosperity on us and our children and families.
Reflecting on O’Donahue’s Blessing Poem, which begins this piece, compels us to stop and think about that other word, “bless.” Another weighty word diluted to automatic at the sound of a sneeze. The poet’s lyrics, for they read exactly like a song, do indeed wrap a cloak around us if we allow them to penetrate.
…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.
What is a blessing?
In his lovely book, To Bless the Space Between Us. John O’Donahue writes:
What is a blessing?
A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence.
The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds. To be in the world is to be distant from the homeland of wholeness. We are confined by limitation and difficulty. When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness. We use the word foreshadow for the imperfect representation of something that is yet to come. We could say that a blessing “forebrightens” the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time. The word blessing comes from the Old English: Blêtsian, blêdsian, blœˆdsian. As intimated in the sound of blêdsian it means “to sanctify or consecrate with blood….”
It is interesting that though the word blessing sounds abstract, a thing of the word and the air, in its original meaning it was vitally connected to the life force. In ancient traditions blood was life; it connected the earthly, the human,and the divine. To bless also means to invoke divine favor upon….
The beauty of blessing is that it recognizes no barriers—and no distances. All the given frontiers of blockage that separate us can be penetrated by the loving subtlety of blessing. This can often be the key to awakening and creating forgiveness. We often linger in the crippling states of anger and resentment. Hurt is always unfair and unexpected; it can leave a bitter residue that poisons the space between us. Eventually the only way forward is forgiveness….
“Beauty is a human calling.” When the poet John O’Donahue makes that statement, our hearts soar. We know the truth and understand our profound revulsion at ugliness upon thinking about it. The Irish poet attributes his lifelong love of beauty to his upbringing on the west coast of Ireland. “I suppose I was blessed by being born into an amazing landscape in the west of Ireland. It’s the Burren region, which is limestone. And it’s a bare limestone landscape. I often think that the forms of the limestone are so abstract and aesthetic, and it is as if they were all laid down by some wild, surrealistic kind of deity…I love Pascal’s phrase that you should always keep something beautiful in your mind. And I have often — like in times when it’s been really difficult for me, if you can keep some kind of little contour that you can glimpse sideways at, now and again, you can endure great bleakness.”
I’ve read or listened to this conversation four or five times. With each read, something new pops up. Primarily, though, I’m reminded of our elemental need for beauty, not as an aesthetic but real food. Nourishment of the psyche, the heart, and the soul, if you believe you have one, is as necessary as water and air.
Tippett:It was actually in your book that I first realized, and I had never thought about this, that the root — the Greek root for the word “beauty” is related to the word for “calling”; to “kalon” and “kalein.”
O’Donohue:That’s right. That’s it exactly.
Tippett:That’s fascinating.
…always, when I think of beauty, because it’s so beautiful, for me — is I think of music. I love music. I think music is just it. I mean, I think that’s — I love poetry, as well, of course, and I think of beauty in poetry.
But I always think that music is what language would love to be, if it could.
The Inner Landscape of Beauty
Music as language
Friday evening, I had the privilege of attending the San Antonio Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection). It was the first time it had been performed in Texas, declared the Music Director Jeffrey Kahane. The composition requires over 100 musicians and a 100-member choir, which is monumental. I cannot describe my and several hundred others’ immersion in this magnificent eighty-minute concert as anything but sacred: God’s language.
“Always when I think of beauty, I think of music…music is just it….But I always think that music is what language would love to be, if it could.”
