Streams of Mercy

Moving has its challenges, and moving with teenagers always has special challenges! I’ve been there and done that! As my younger daughter and her family move from the deep south to the north, they will need to work together to make this new house their home. We all know this is one of those things that’s easier said than done!

I shared with them this prayer from To Bless the Space Between Us, a Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue, to encourage them in this time of transition into a new beginning.

For a New Home

May this house shelter your life.

When you come in home here,

May all the weight of the world

Fall from your shoulders.

May your heart be tranquil here,

Blessed by peace the world cannot given.

May this home be a lucky place,

Where the graces your life desires

Always find the pathways to your door.

May nothing destructive

Ever cross your threshold.

May this be a safe place

Full of understanding and acceptance,

Where you can be as you are,

Without the need of any mask

Of pretense or image.

May this home be a place of discovery,

Where the possibilities that sleep

In the clay of your soul can emerge

To deepen and refine your vision

For all that is yet to come to birth.

May it be a house of courage,

Where healing and growth are loved,

Where dignity and forgiveness prevail;

A home where patience of spirit is prized,

And the sight of the destination is never lost,

Though the journey be difficult and slow.

May there be great delight around this hearth.

May it be a house of welcome

For the broken and diminished.

May you have the eyes to see

That no visitor arrives without a gift

And no guest leaves without a blessing.

O’Donohue writes, “In the parched deserts of postmodernity, a blessing can be like the discovery of a fresh well. It would be lovely if we could rediscover our power to bless one another. I believe each of us can bless. When a blessing is invoked, it changes the atmosphere. Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness … in the light and reverence of blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way. In a dead wall, a new window opens, in dense darkness a path starts to glimmer, and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew.”

May it be so in the life of all families in times of transition.

Elizabeth