Blessings...

Some days you just KNOW you are blessed - and today was one of those days - and it is an awareness not born of my effort or worth but simply from a sense of God's deep and abiding grace. Today was filled with things to do, people to visit and pray with and errands to run. And my honey is harried with the demands of work and doctors and all the rest. But today - through the better part of it all - I felt infused with grace. At peace and at rest much as Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic, said: "All is well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Part of my awareness, I know, is connected to Thanksgiving: this feast day always heightens my sense of gratitude. And this year - as we prepare our Thanksgiving Eve music festival - I am surrounded with loving friends. What a treasure: deep and tender friendship bathed in music. I mean, how blessed can a man be? I am taken by the words of John O'Donohue when he writes:

May you listen to your longing to be free.
May the franmes of your belonging be generous enough for your dreams.
May yo arise each day with a voice of blessing whispering in your heart.
May you find a harmony between your soul and your life.
May the sanctuary of soul never become haunted.
May you know the eternal longing that lives at the heart of time.
May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.
May you never place walls between the light and yourself.
May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world gather you, mind you and
embrace you in belonging.
(From To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)

So, onward to cooking supper for my sweetheart - and writing my first Advent meditation on music and peace-making tomorrow - and our final rehearsal for Thanksgiving Eve with all my dear musical buddies. (And then some Thanksgiving shopping, too!) All shall be well... and all manner of things shall be very well.