No dream message today but I felt to refer to my favourite poet John O’Donohue. Following yesterday’s journal on evil and darkness, the page that I opened today relates to the unexpected arrival of illness, and the journey that it can take us on from darkness to light. I have transposed the word ‘illness’ with ‘coronavirus’ and changed the text to plural to make it relevant to our current journeys.
Now is the time of dark invitation, Beyond a frontier we did not expect; Abruptly, our old life seems distant.
We barely noticed how each day opened A path through fields never questioned, we expected deep down to hold treasure. Now our time on earth becomes full of threat; Before our eyes our future shrinks.
We lived absorbed in the day to day, So continuous with everything around us, That we could forget we were separate;
Now this dark companion has come between us, Distances have opened in our eyes, We feel that against our will A stranger has married our heart.
Nothing before has made us Feel so isolated and lost.
When the reverberations of shock subside in us, May grace come to restore us to balance. May it shape a new space in our hearts to embrace this virus as a teacher Who has come to open our lives to new worlds.
May we find in ourselves A courageous hospitality Towards what is difficult, Painful and unknown.
May we learn to use this coronavirus As a lantern to illuminate the new qualities that will emerge in us.
May the fragile harvesting of this slow light Help to release whatever has become false in us. May we trust this light to clear a path Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety Until we feel arising within us a tranquillity Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.
May we find the wisdom to listen to the coronavirus: Ask it why it came? Why it chose now? Where it wants to take us? What it wants us to know? What quality of space it wants to create in us? What we need to learn to become more fully ourselves that our presence may shine in the world?
May we keep the faith with our bodies, Learning to see them as holy sanctuaries Which can bring this night-wound gradually towards freedom and the breaking of dawn.