Blessing – A Poem and Mandala

Those in-between moments, long pauses,
interminable wait or – paradoxically –
too much action. A blur, a flash, a crash.

Bless this very moment.
Bless me, sitting at my desk, with filtered November shining through my window,
a light/shadow abstract cast upon these written words. Holy words.

Bless this moment of routine
of ritual.
In the midst of the ordinary and mundane
In between the common and the trivial.

In the midst of unspeakable despair
lingers a relentless awareness of what is.

Yes, here is the sacred.
In this – the present – there is presence.

Bless the quiet night
and the firelight,
the dark shiver and the cold.

Bless the dream unfolding in sleep
and the dreamer;
Bless the seeds germinating in damp earth
and the cracked seed, foreteller of life.

Bless a pale sun that casts blue shadows on crested snow;
Bless the lakes and rivers in icy embrace.

Bless us, in our silence and our singing,
our laughter and our weeping.

Bless absence in the presence
and presence in the absence.

Bless this moment.
Bless us all.