The Prayer Chest – 11/30/22
The Blessing of the Morning Light
The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give,
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join all of your previous disappearances
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new and newly alive.
—- David Whyte, from Essentials (2019)
In Memoriam for John O’Donohue (2015)
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David Whyte is an Anglo-Irish poet. He attributes his poetic interest to both the songs and the poetry of his mother’s Irish heritage and to the landscape of West Yorkshire where he grew up. He has said that all his poetry and philosophy are based on “the conversational nature of reality”. He is the author of many volumes of poetry and books of prose.