Rainbow Arc of the Afternoon Sun
I’d thought that my Prelude to Solstice post would be the last of 2025. But, alas, this morning, I feel guided to end The Pivot’s year on a different note. And besides that, I miss the weekly ritual of discovering what wants to be shared. So, a few thoughts, questions rising in me as I look back at 2025 and forward to 2026 and a blessing for this turbulent, opportunity-rich time.
In a year-end post a few years back I wondered, What will we face this year? How will we face it and who will we be as we do so? The same can certainly be asked again. Yet, in looking back at the year and my personal path, I’m guided to look forward with curiosity and invite Muse to wonder where will I direct my energy, my attention, my precious care in the next moment, the next, and the year ahead?
What about you? What do you care about that deserves your energy, your attention, your precious care?
In this time of slowing down, the need for rest has made itself known quite clearly to me. Not just rest for the body, but for mind and spirit. I don’t expect that will change with the turning of a page to new calendar year. How will I honor it, this deep truth of winter’s rest, the way of Nature on our planet home, while at the same time taking whatever is my place in the unfolding of our world? What about you?
A few years back as a new year of uncertainty began, I found a beautiful John O’Donohue poem, Beannacht – A Blessing, written for his mother Josie. After reading and listening again to O’Donohue read the short poem (you can find his reading here) I felt such resonance with the times we’re navigating that I wanted to share it again.
As he so often does, O’Donohue expresses and calls forth awareness of a deep knowing in my heart. May our walk through all that 2026 brings be as graceful as his words.
Beannacht – A Blessing
On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
Sunset