A Wintery Spring Day in the Woods Out Back
Out of the winter ground a new springtime of fresh possibility slowly arises. In its real presence suffering transfigures and enlarges human beings. John O’Donohue (Out of the Winter a New Spring – essay in Eternal Echoes)
It’s only in the last couple years that I’ve been introduced to the deep, thoughtful work of O’Donohue. A visiting friend recently gifted me with his book of essays and poems, Eternal Echoes. For several days I didn’t go beyond the last verse of the opening poem:
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Gentle in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love
The verse landed deep, a longing for how to be in this world moment to moment.
A few days later I opened the book to a random page and was greeted with this:
Your true longing is to belong to the eternal that echoes continually in everything that happens to you.
O’Donohue continues:
Real power has nothing to do with force, control, status or money. Real power is the persistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished. To be able to recognize, in the scattered graffiti of your desires, the signature of the eternal. True prayer … keeps the graciousness and splendor of that vulnerability open.
A few days later, another random opening revealed the opening quote above, especially apropos on this wintry spring day a short five days after Zadie Byrd and I experienced an event that I know we have both feared. She was attacked by a large dog and we both sustained injuries in the process of breaking free. We are on the mend. Resting, healing, receiving love and support, and following ‘doctor’s orders’ as best we can.
My gratitude runs deep as do the reflections that have surfaced so far and are certain to continue. As with all life events, there are gemstones to mined. Or, as the old story of the young optimist cleaning out the barn goes ‘with all this sh_t, surely there must be a pony in here somewhere’. Muse says, ‘yes, there is more to come, much more.’
I know with all my Being that that there are blessings beyond measure in our experience for both Zadie Byrd and me. As are Zadie and me, the spring ground, blessed by snow this day, is fecund with new possibility. Life’s blessings are often disguised.
I leave you with these final words from the page I ‘randomly’ opened to this day:
… Real healing is, however, another matter. As with all great arrivals in the soul, it comes from a direction that we often could neither predict nor anticipate.
… And so it is!