BLESSING FOR A NURSE

I've made a recent friendship with a hospice nurse and just forwarded this note and blessing on to her.

Hello new and soon-to-be dear friend,

I was rapidly thumbing through the book of blessings, thinking I would take one to the family Christmas dinner. As chance would have it, the pages stopped on the blessings for a Nurse. Then, I remembered you were a hospice nurse, and then I knew why the page stopped on this blessing.

I got to know the entire rotation of Hospice nurses, and even the Chaplin, that came to my mom and dad's house, as my father was released from his cancer riddled body, in January 2003. He was 83.

So, this is a more proper blessing, for the nurse in you. The tears flow as I type this, and then my mouth forms a gentle, upturned smile.

Many, many blessings to you, for the work you undertake.

I'll bring this book of blessings down with me, as I'd like to read you the one, On New Beginnings.



BLESSINGS: FOR A NURSE
Excerpted from the book: Bless the Space Between Us
Written by: John O’Donohue

Your mind knows the world of illness,
The fright that invades a person
Arriving in out of the world,
Distraught and grieved by illness,
How it can strip a life of its joy,
Dim the light of the heart
Put shock in the eyes.

You see worlds breaking
At the onset of illness:

Families at bedsides distraught
That their mother’s name has come up
In the secret lottery of misfortune
That had always chosen someone else.
You watch their helpless love
That would exchange places with her.

The veil of skin opened,
The search through the body’s night
To remove tissue, war-torn with cancer.

Young lives that should be out in the sun
Enjoying life with wild hearts,
Come in here lamed by accident
And the lucky ones who leave,
Already old and in captive posture.

The elderly, who should be prepared,
But are frightened and unsure.
You understand no one
Can learn beforehand
An elegant or easy way to die.

In this fragile frontier-place, your kindness
Becomes a light that consoles the brokenhearted,
Awakens within desperate storms
The oasis of serenity that calls
The spirit to rise from beneath the weight of pain,
To crate a new space in the person’s mind
Where they gain distance from their suffering
And begin to see the invitation
To integrate and transform it.

May you embrace the beauty in what you do
And how you stand like a secret angel
Between the bleak despair of illness
And the unquenchable light of spirit
That can turn the darkest destiny towards dawn.

May you never doubt the gifts you bring;
Rather, learn from these frontiers
Wisdom for your own heart.
May you come to inherit
The blessings of your kindness
And never be without care and love
When winter enters your own life.