For a Loved One Struggling With Addiction

A Blessing by John O’Donohue

On its way through the innocent night,
The moth is ambushed by the light,
Becomes glued to a window
Where a candle burns; its whole self,
its dreams of flight and all desire
trapped in one glazed gaze;
now nothing else can satisfy
but the deadly beauty of flame.

When you lose the feel
for all other belonging
and what is truly near
becomes distant and ghostly,
and you are visited
and claimed by a simplicity
sinister in its singularity,

No longer yourself, your mind
and will owned and steered
from elsewhere now,
you would sacrifice anything
to dance once more to the haunted
music with your fatal beloved
who owns the eyes of your heart.

These words of blessing cannot
reach, even as echoes,
to the shore of where you are,
yet may they work without you
to soften some slight line through
to the white cave where
your soul is captive.

May some glimmer
of outside light reach your eyes
to help you recognize how
you have fallen for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon
onto real ground again
where this fundamentalist
shell might start to crack
for you to hear
again your own echo.
That your lost lonesome heart
might learn to cry out
for the true intimacy
of love that waits
to take you home
to where you are known
and seen and where
your life is treasured
beyond every frontier
of despair you have crossed.

– John O’Donohue
(from his book, To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings)

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Thoughts on the Disease of Addiction
• “Wholeness Is Never Lost, It Is Only Forgotten”
• Interfaith Chaplaincy: Meeting People Where They're At
• A Longing and a Prayer

Image: Michael J. Bayly.