Happy Saint Urho’s Day (A Finish-American-Minnesota celebration) today.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day (everywhere) tomorrow.
During these weighty, stumbly days of national and international life, especially from my perch in Minnesota USA, I’m finding myself in need of, what?, comfort or hope or promise of salvation. It’s in that space – and especially around March 17 – that I turn to the Irish poet and priest John O’Donohue. This from his book The Space Between Us, the US title, 2008:
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 gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight. . . .
I’m inspired by the flock of colours that O’Donohue conjures up and hope that you find what you need to sustain yourself these days.
Annette Atkins
