For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing John O'Donahue
John O'Donohue was an Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher. He was a native Irish speaker, and as an author is best known for popularising Celtic spirituality. On the 22 December, 2017 he wrote this poem. It speaks into a Western phenomenon that we may not have recognised could well be an Epidemic that has stolen much from us….Busyness
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become labour-some events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
Humanity is so divided, including the most intimate of all relationships…marriage. Families and communities, tribal groups of all kinds across the whole spectrum of human affairs is marked by division in some ways. We seem to be so polarised and it could well be that this has been a deliberate orchestrated agenda, and maybe it is.
We all have to look in the mirror and ask ‘Am I part of the problem or part of the solution’? without wanting to reduce it to a glib cliche. In the West in particular, human beings seem so Dis-Connected at a soul and heart level.
How well do we really and truly LISTEN to each other’s stories?
How well do we really and truly listen to our own hearts?
To the rhythm of our hearts, the seasons of our lives?
To other peoples hearts?
In a culture saturated by ‘busyness’ it’s as is we have to be busy to feel alive, to feel significant, to feel we have a purpose, to feel wanted and needed and to feel we are able to offer our gifts and abilities.
The beauty of Paradox
To really find our lives we have to lose them….which is the one thing we simply are not prepared to do. Sometimes being brought to the end of ourselves can be the best thing to happen to us. It’s deeply frightening. I have been there and walked through that fire. This is what Jesus called us to…He knows our hearts like no other. This the exquisite, radical, purging paradox that we only truly find ourselves when we lose ourselves for something much greater….However, you can only live with Paradox, when you learn to live a dying life and become oriented to a Cause greater than yourself.
Exhausted like the hamster on the wheel.
If our lives resemble a hamster on a wheel, constantly repeating the same thing and way of living…..there are reasons why we are Exhausted aren’t there. Sometimes God forces us to be still, by bringing a Crisis into our lives, and even then many harden their hearts and become victims by the event/person/situation that so profoundly disrupted and disoriented their lives.
“Disorientation is a cacophony of voices in dispute all claiming to be the voice of reality'“ Walter Brueggemann Old Testament scholar. The voices we listen to determines so much does’nt it ?
The Isms that have dehumanised us and contributed to our Exhaustion.
We have been conditioned by the Worldview of Secularism/Humanism and others like Capitalism, Materialism, Consumerism and Individualism and of course Globalism. This in turn is to do with Empire, and therefore Western Colonialism, Imperialism and Racism. Then there has been the Long March across the Institutions of Cultural Marxism and the deconstructing of language of Post-Modernism. Man, so many isms….that create schisms and divisions.
A Worldview is like a tree.
The roots=the core beliefs.
The trunk=the values
The branches=the behaviour
The fruit=the consequences.
Why are we do divided? What is the Worldview, the Ideologies that have created this division? Divided humanity is the bad fruit of the core rotten beliefs. These core beliefs of Colonialism for example will be based on Evolution and Naturalism, the universe and humanity are the result of random chance. Random Chance is our Maker then. And the values- racial supremacy. The behaviour? The last 9 horrific months since 7 October. The consequences? Ethnic cleansing, Genocide based on a very sick Psychology of victimhood that became an ideology of racial supremacy and a ‘right to defend themselves’. Yeah that some kind of rotten fruit produced by an even more rotten interpretation of reality and what it means to be human.
It is Exhausting to keep looking at our phones and to observe the Evil and just keeps getting more and more evil. And we live in the Belly of the Beast if we live in the West because it is the West that has joined and enabled this Genocide…because of Empire.
Sometimes, depending on the issue being discussed, its not helpful to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and more helpful to maintain a balanced posture and disposition, to glean what we can affirm in World-views we may feel polarised toward and disagree fundamentally. Everyone feels strong about love, truth, justice, meaning, purpose, and other universal human issues.
So for example, if someone says to me ‘I don’t believe in God’….I simply ask them ‘What do you mean by God’? This then takes the interaction to a deeper level, that exposes buried issues that may be to do with pain and injustice etc and then I might be able to discover and understand why they subconsciously project onto God their own historic pain, by rejecting Him.
The classic is ‘If God exists, why is the so much suffering and injustice in the world’. This is called the ‘Problem of Evil’. If God does not exist then evil is not a problem. What standard are you appealing to when you say ‘evil’. Why is something evil and wrong if there is no absolute standard by which to object?
Points of contact
Are there points of contact with something we may abhor and hate? It’s difficult to reason in a mutually respectful, sensitive and humane way with something we find abhorrent. Take the Genocide in Gaza which we have witnessed on our smart phones to a greater or lesser degree, which in a way is unprecedented in that it is the first Genocide to be livestreamed for the whole world to see.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are NO points of contact with a person who is clearly a Psychopath and Israel have done a brilliant job of impersonating Psychopathic mass murderers have they not? Obviously, there are certain types of mindsets that it is impossible to reason with and have any point of contact.
How do we disagree? What is the disposition and the spirit in which I disagree?
It’s beyond words and shocks us to our core, if we maintain our conscience and our humanity. I try to find ‘points of contact’ though because we are all human beings. So what is the issue that you are trying to defend. My instinct is to avoid every pro Israel person, which is difficult because I’m married to one. So to maintain my sanity, my conscience, my heart and soul, I have to work out a way to negotiate very difficult terrain.
I can say very easily, that I know I am right to protest and speak out against Genocide, but its the way that I do it, its the disposition in which I disagree that matters. If I become like an IDF soldier in my interaction with someone and start ranting irrationally, its not possible to engage in a proper conversation. If I run from every difficult person and situation, I will not grow and mature as a person. Suffering is actually necessary sometimes to make us more deeply, substantially human in order to have empathy and compassion.
Questions…Quest.
Questions have a way of disarming our defences and can penetrate to the heart of the matter, even with those who hold to a belief that we know is absolutely wrong. But when we object and take issue with something. Why ? Because we are appealing to something that is universal, something that is an absolute standard.
Why is truth and justice so important to us as human beings? Probing questions cut to the bottom line and the fundamental issues of being human. This is not naive Idealism I am talking about, thinking that just by asking certain questions, world peace will be just around the corner. Of course not.
But if there is an unseen obscenely powerful Oligarch elite playing us like a violin, how do we step out of the orchestrated Matrix of ‘divide and conquer’ in order to a neutral observer? We have to work out our own way of not being played like a violin, so we have to dance to another drummer.
Anyway, this has potentially veered off the main road I began with and taken a left fork in the road…..
Does this apply to you: “You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back”
As Jesus Himself said by way of Invitation…..Come to Me all you who are weary and heavily burdened and I will give you rest, refreshing your souls with salvation. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.