This Practice builds upon themes explored in this season’s Invitation and Pause — inviting you to lean into compassion and courage — and to honour the quiet rhythm of your heart that has been there all along.
To Come Home to Yourself
May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquillities.
May all that is unloved in you
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.
— John O’Donohue
In these words, John O’Donohue offers more than a reflection; he offers a threshold. Think of his lines as a doorway — a gentle passage where you are invited to come home to yourself.
They gather what is unforgiven, what is fearful, what feels unloved, and hold it in a wider tenderness. They do not ask you to become someone new; they softly call you back to the hearth that has always been waiting within you.
The heart has never been separate from wisdom. It’s the seat of feeling but also the dwelling place of deep knowing — a hearth within the house of the self. To tend the heart is not sentimental work; it is sacred work.
Wisdom does not rush toward answers. It moves in rhythm with the soul and with the season of Imbolc, trusting what is forming before it can be named. As John O’Donohue writes, to live wisely is to remain generous rather than trying to banish the unknown:
Wisdom is the way that you learn to decipher the unknown; and the unknown is our closest companion. So wisdom is the art of being courageous and generous with the unknown, of being able to decipher and recognize its treasures.
— Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom
Rumi once described the human heart as a guest house, where each day new visitors arrive — joy or sorrow, anger or fatigue. Wisdom is found in greeting each with a steady presence, saying, Come in and stay awhile. I am listening.
Listening is about compassion, the courage to stay with difficulty and the patience to remain present. It is not about analyzing or judging the fears and doubts we carry — or any of the other unwelcome visitors who arrive. It is simply being with them.
Once these feelings have been acknowledged, we can begin to ask ourselves: What might I learn from this experience?
When we ask this question, it is natural to seek clarity — to hope that answers will suddenly be revealed, that insights will guide us, or that solutions will settle what feels unfinished. Yet the unknown remains the unknown. We do not need to have all the answers, nor will they appear all at once. This season, the invitation is to be patient with yourself and to listen.
In early Irish tradition, poetry was intertwined with astronomy, memory, and mapping. Poets were navigators of story and time, slowly learning to recognize the patterns of the stars. Imagine, then, that you are the poet of your own journey and patience is the map guiding your way.
At first, the stars in the darkened sky appear scattered and without design. Yet with patience, they begin to gather into constellations. Meaning is one of the treasures of the unknown, arriving in its own time.
Listening to the heart unfolds in much the same way. What reveals itself first is not answers but sensation — the body’s quiet language: a tightening in the chest, a hesitation before words form. These are your earliest stars, asking to be noticed. They do not tell a full story, and they do not need to. They simply appear in the night sky.
Mark Nepo writes:
To listen is to lean in softly, with a willingness to be changed.
— The Book of Awakening
Change may not arrive at once; with it comes joys and losses of many kinds. No matter the choices we have, it may be a difficult transition. The Irish Gaelic word for change is athru; it’s known to be a liminal time involving the descent and rebirth of parts of ourselves. Almost imperceptibly a willingness to change will emerge — if we sit, listen inwardly, and patiently embrace what we are holding within.
This season’s practices are offered as companions for that journey — to help you remain in relationship with what is emerging, lived not only in thought but in the body. They invite a gentle turning toward what is already here — embers in the hearth, stars in the dark, breath moving through the body.
This is a coming home to the sanctuary within you — a dwelling you already inhabit beneath a sky that is already forming its stars.