Favorite Holiday Song - The Gift of Blessing

Grant Us Peace - Dona Nobis Pacem.

Here’s a repost of one of my favorite holiday songs, Dona Nobis Pacem. For me it has always been a song of hope, a song of turning toward the light, an expression of our longing for a kinder better new year than the year before. In such unsettling times our expressions of daily hope and good intent, our expectations and belief in the possible of the better kinder world become even more powerful.

A Blessing

Years ago I was given a lovely book by poet/author John O’Donohue called To Bless The Space Between Us. The book has become an old friend now dog-eared and bookmarked, underlined with many notes scrawled in the margins. According to O’Donohue a blessing is not a tame thing, it is wild as life is wild. A blessing is deeply human, grounded in our experiences of longing, suffering and life’s endless joys and challenges. A blessing acknowledges something of the divine within, a subtle quickening that calls us to beauty, to see possibility and experience connection. He goes on to write, “It would be infinitely lonely to live in a world without blessing. The word Blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggest that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else.”

In the book Gilead, by Marilyn Robinson, an elderly pastor describes about how he loves to bless the new babies as they arrive into his community - not so much as to imbue the child with holiness , but to humbly acknowledge the quiet inner light already present in that child - already present within each one of us.

Dona Nobis Pacem has always felt like a blessing in the manner of described by O’Donohue. It is full of depth and longing, an implied question and invitation of “when, and please come” but also a invokes the peace available right here and right now.

Here is my blessing for you all today!

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Write A Word of Blessing

In the comment section - write a word or one sentence of blessing to our entire Gathering of Spirits Community (to an individual you have appreciated their posts, to our entire community, for someone not present but always in your heart).

Let us express our connection to one another, our longing and hopes for the world. Let us affirm the goodness already here and within each one of us.

Warmly

Carrie