1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

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 into 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.

—byJohn O’Donohue
"Beannacht" is the Gaelic word for "blessing."

Please join in for Round 5 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the August 2020 read-around sessions on Friday afternoons (it’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email.

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Next Read Around is August 14, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

John O’Donoghue was a Catholic priest who left the constraints of the church and pursued his passion for Celtic wisdom and poetry. Unfortunately, he passed away young, in his 50s. Fortunately, he left behind an incredible legacy of beautiful writing. He perfected the art of blessing and wrote many poems of blessing. His friend, the poet David White, often joked that John O’Donohue could bless anything, even the carburetor on a car.

To me, the giving or receiving of a blessing is one of the greatest gifts of life. Blessing is more than a permission slip, more than a simple ok. A blessing is perhaps the deepest form of affirmation. When we bless, we not only accept and acknowledge what is, we give our assent to its becoming what it could be when beheld in the heart of love, not as a requirement, but as an invitation. Similarly, to be blessed is to be held in the heart of love with all our flaws and foibles with an open door for us to become what love would have us be.

You can notice this invitation in the common form many blessings take, and that O’Donohue uses throughout his poem, by starting with the simple permissive word, “may." Notice how he ties this to a difficulty or challenge that might defeat us or depress us and then suggest the situation transforms through a blessing. You can use this simple linguistic tool as an entree to offer a blessing for anything or anyone.

A genuine blessing is not only an invitation. It is more than mere wishful thinking, which posits a positive outcome without any real belief in the possibility of it. Blessing, by contrast, is an act of intention. It is truly intending that the situation or person flourish. Give yourself a day to practice blessing. And you may well find yourself blessed in the process. As John O’Donohue says, “may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.”

Week 18 Prompt Menu

  1. What might be the “clay dance” that O’Donohue calls upon to balance you when you feel yourself stumbling or burdened with some dead weight? What balances you when you are off center?

  2. Think of a challenge (ideally one with which you are currently struggling). Describe it metaphorically and then use “may” to invite a positive transformation out of it.

  3. Write a poem to the color(s), shape, or sound of loss and include other colors, shapes, sounds that may transform the feeling of loss into a thing of beauty or a work of art?

  4. Consider a time when you felt lost (O’Donohue’s image of a currach—a small boat— of thought in a black ocean). Describe the feeling of being lost and then transform it into a blessing using the phrase “may it…”.

  5. Write a string of blessings starting each one with a challenge transformed into a blessing using the word, “may…”

  6. Write a series of blessings simply starting with “may” and ending with “be yours” as in O’Donohue’s 4th stanza.

  7. Write a poem with a stanza about the earth, a stanza about light, and a stanza about the ocean (or a stanza for each of the common elements of air, earth water, and .fire)

  8. Practice giving your blessing to things for a day or more. Ask yourself, what would love invite for this thing, this situation or this person.

  9. Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.