In earlier years, here in the pages of Reckonings, I offered this deeply moving blessing by the late John O'Donohue, an Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher who lived from 1956 to 2008. He is best remembered as a student of Celtic spirituality, a tradition rich in meaning and worthy of lingering reflection. O'Donohue's books include Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, Eternal Echoes, To Bless the Space Between Us, and Walking in Wonder.
See also the writing of John Philip Newell (https://www.earthandsoul.org), the preeminent living scholar of Celtic spirituality. I recommend his book Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul (2021).
Finally, I've greatly enjoyed reading about the early (5th century) Irish saints - Patrick, Brigid of Kildare, Columba, Brendan - whose lives are buried in history but reawakened in deeply informed and wonderfully engaging novels; for example, Frederick Buechner's Brendan (1987).
I wish I could include O'Donohue's own reading of "Bennacht" here. His Irish English is lovely to hear. He read the poem in a conversation with Krista Tippett in On Being: https://medium.com/@onbeing/beannacht-a-poem-8c2c29a4d14e.
The only two (Gaelic) words readers may not know are the poem's title, which means blessing, and the word "currach" in mid-poem. A currach is an Irish boat used for sailing in the west of Ireland. The Oxford English Dictionary describes a currach as: "A small boat made of wickerwood and covered with hides [later, canvas], used from ancient times in Scotland and Ireland, and propelled with a paddle, a coracle."
With that brief introduction, here is John O'Donohue's "Bennacht."
Bennacht
by John O'Donohue
On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours,
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.