Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost. Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty. Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called. John O’Donohue, Excerpt from the book Eternal Echoes
The prayer of my soul, the voices of longing, my hungers, the unexpected and the inrush of my future.
Write a prayer worthy of the destiny to which I am called.
I read this and God bumps appear, shivers run up and down the length of my spine, I close my eyes out of reverence, a longing to connect with all that is there, and then… the belittling voices come upon me.
How could I e v e r write a prayer that call forth all that John O’Donohue point to, the grandeur of life, of love, of liberation?
Ah.
How could I not?
Be Me.
Do Me.
Perhaps the prayer of my soul need not be more than that?
I’m moved by this O’Donohue passage, Helena, and too wonder in awe and amazement at his ability to harness so much of what deeply matters in these illuminatingly gifted ways. And yes, I watch you be you and do you and it absolutely feels like the path that will surely lead you to your own prayers for your own soul…and likely mine, too…and others, as well. It’s already happened.