For My Familiar - Strength

I lost this sweet animal friend the day before Thanksgiving.  She meant the world to me and today I just want honor her with this lovely poem that I found.  I have had to draw on the energy of The Strength card to help me cope with the daily reminders of her absence.  We were a good balance.  

​To Learn From Animal Being

Nearer to the earth's heart,
Deeper within it's silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

​Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be who we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.

​May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.

~John O'Donohue

Rest in peace, my sweet Jazzy.  I miss you.