Home > Work > The Bell and the Blackbird
1 " BLESSING FOR THE LIGHTI thank you, light, again,for helping me to findthe outline of my daughter’s face,I thank you light,for the subtle wayyour merest touch gives shapeto such things I couldonly learn to lovethrough your delicate instruction,and I thank you, this morningwaking again,most intimately and secretlyfor your visible invisibility,the way you make me lookat the face of the worldso that everything becomesan eye to everything elseand so that strangely,I also see myself being seen,so that I can be born againin that sight, so thatI can have this one other wayalong with every other way,to know that I am here. "
― David Whyte , The Bell and the Blackbird
2 " BLESSING FOR SOUNDI thank you,for the smallest sound,for the way my ears openeven before my eyes,as if to rememberthe way everything beganwith an original, vibrant, note,and I thank you for thiseveryday original music,always being rehearsed,always being played,always being rememberedas something newand arriving, a tram linebelow in the city street,gull cries, or a ship’s hornin the distant harbour,so that in waking I hear voiceseven where there is no voiceand invitations wherethere is no invitationso that I can wake with youby the ocean, in summeror in the deepest seeminglyquietest winter,and be with youso that I can hear youeven with my eyes closed,even with my heart closed,even before I fully wake. "
3 " THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD (excerpt)The soundof a bellstill reverberating,or a blackbirdcallingfrom a cornerof afield.Asking youto wakeinto this lifeor inviting youdeeperto one that waits.Either waytakes courage,either way wants youto be nothingbut that self thatis no self at all,wants you to walkto the placewhere you findyou already knowhow to giveevery last thingaway. "