The Quiet Loyalty of Breath





Like the poem below by John O’Donohue, I have become accustomed to making a morning offering. I confess, however, that this week it has felt so hard, not burdensome, but as yesterday reminded me, lament is simply excruciating. And so I think of hope and one of my favorite passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “hope does not disappoint.” True but where is it? Where is the hope in lament? Where is the hope in viral pandemics now overlaid with racial hatred pandemic? It has to be in love, of course, but love feels rather shadowed right now. I have learned from St Benedict that rules of life, patterns and disciplines will help us with recovering hope. In prayer and offering especially of gratitude we find the balance for mourning which teeters on precious hope. I am buoyed somehow by the evening’s rest, the prayers which are released and surrendered to the Holy One, and the open nest which is ready today for the eternal. I am particularly struck by the line “the quiet loyalty of breath” and I remember that we are all united in some notion of breathing together and communal loyalty. I want to send each of you a blessing this day for persisting in protest, lament and love. Strange companions and yet I think perhaps they are essential ingredients for hope:

A Morning Offering
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no on sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May My mind come alive today
to the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came her for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

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