our festival of illumination pilgrimage with the Caravan of Re-Joy-Sing under last night’s sign, the seventh night’s sun of the airy sign of Libra brings a dream gift of an important key to life…. balance is an image that has played through my dreams for as long as i can re-member as has contemplating life as walking a tightrope along the razor’s edge… on this first day of the new year, it feels so right to sit still on the seesaw of life and begin this turn with breathing in Libra’s gift of journeying to the inner stillpoint and breathing out the gift of balance into the cosmos… Here’s a blessing to breathe in and out as you walk in balance…

Blessing for the New Year

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