I am on my way out of town for an annual contemplative prayer retreat.  A week without facebook, twitter, and klout ratings, without homestead responsibilities, and one of me showing up to God.  It is a week I have come to thirst for in the past six years.  And I always leave the blog with a little note saying, you’ll be fine without me.  I am saying that to myself though.  I need to remember that blog numbers, facebook likes, and comments are not a measure of my worth.  This next week of listening to what is happening deep in my soul is worth so much more.

Every year I move more into the hard work of freedom. Freedom that has nothing to do with my nationality or passport.  It is an openness which comes in being reminded of how deeply loved I am.  In a matter of less than two weeks I will return to the world of words and interwebbing with that love wrapped tightly around me once again. I hope to share, as I did last year, more of what I learn as I reemerge gently back into the every day rhythm of my life.

May we all be gentle with ourselves until then. Here is a Celtic Blessing for Freedom from my favorite guy, John O’Donohue.

As a bird soars high

In the free holding of the wind,

Clear of the certainty of ground,

Opening the imagination of wings

Into the grace of emptiness

To fulfill new voyagings,

May your life awaken

To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself

Of the expectation of land,

Approaching only

In the form of waves

That fill and pleat and fall

With such gradual elegance

As to make of the limit

A sonorous threshold

Whose music echoes back along

The give and strain of memory,

Thus may your heart know the patience

That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of earth

Welcomes all we call death,

Taking deep into itself

The tight solitude of a seed,

Allowing it time

To shed the grip of former form

And give way to a deeper generosity

That will one day send it forth,

A tree into springtime,

May all that holds you

Fall from its hungry ledge

Into the fecund surge of your heart.

To Bless the Space Between Us by, John O’Donohue. Doubleday, New York. 2008, pages 30-31.