BLESSING FOR THE LIGHT
from The Bell and the Blackbird by David Whyte

I thank you, light, again,
for helping me to find
the outline of my daughter’s face,
I thank you light,
for the subtle way
your merest touch gives shape
to such things I could
only learn to love
through your delicate instruction,
and I thank you, this morning
waking again,
most intimately and secretly
for your visible invisibility,
the way you make me look
at the face of the world
so that everything becomes
an eye to everything else
and so that strangely,
I also see myself being seen,
so that I can be born again
in that sight, so that
I can have this one other way
along with every other way,
to know that I am here.

I baptized my son and daughter, my daughter first, and a year later, my son.  As a Catholic, I am late for the show.  More than anything, I want them to know how to trust themselves, seek light and grace, and know they can always begin again.  Whether they use Jesus and God as a path for living truth, beauty and goodness is up to them.  I suspect it will ebb and flow for them as it has for me.  God, to me, speaks through poets, writers, and artists.  I find him in the flowers I create with; their colors are what give me faith.   I hear God the most in David Whyte’s poems.  His wisdom is divine truth.