Endings don’t always have to be the ambush we fear – the things taken from us without our consent.
So as we approach the end of this year, how might we prepare ourselves for the possibilities of the next?
And open our senses with gratitude to the natural passing of time?
Perhaps by walking with John O’Donohue’s blessing: At the end of the year as we approach the close of 2021:
The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening the shapes of days.As this year draws to its end,
+ John O’Donohue, first two verses of At the end of the year, from Benedictus: A Book of Blessings
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.