Some weeks are just exhausting. For me, the combination of playing catch-up after taking my daughter off to college last week, the effects of physical illness, the emotional fatigue associated with the 10th anniversary of September 11, and various activities during the week meant that by last night I found myself in a state where even walking upstairs to brush my teeth so I could go to bed seemed like an enormous task.
I sat in my study and, as I often do, picked up my copy of John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us. And, as is often the case, I found a blessing that spoke to me – a blessing titled, appropriately enough, For One Who is Exhausted.
After describing the state of weariness, O’Donohue offers a beautiful prescription, and a promise:
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
Amen.
Creo en Dios! 