GRAVEYARD   BLESSING

As you stand there on the lumpy,
clumpy green grass of a cemetery -
may the prayers and blessings of this
sacred place resonate and remind you
of both the boundaries and slipping
through those boundaries into eternal life.


May your tears become holy water falling
on the grave or graves of your loved ones.


May your loved ones come back once again -
if just for a moment -
just for a few sacred moments
in this here and this now.


May you see them come running towards you.


May you see scenes of eating bread, drinking wine,
beer, toasting one another with clinking glasses.


May memories of playing cards - walking,
talking, holding hands with them, hearing
sounds of laughter and song again
from the days of your youth.


May these graveyard moments bring you to pray -
bring you into the presence of God.
“O God because you are everlasting,
may we trust that You will bring all of us,
sinners and saints, into Your everlasting embrace.


“O Christ because you are resurrection -
bless us now with the hope to know
that nobody is here in this sacred cemetery,
only sorrows and sadness and solid stone
memories - fading names and dates
on so many aging tombstones.”


May we then be blessed to move our eyes
from looking down at green grass and white stones
and look up to see blue skies above - but to know
that the sky is just a blue ceiling underneath
a great, big, wide, polished wooden dance
floor of the place called, “Heaven!”


May we be blessed to hear the pounding sounds
coming down to earth 
from that great big shellacked wooden floor -
the moving feet 
of a hundred million Irish step dancers -
dancing in tune with a hundred thousand
fiddlers, pipers and drummers,
inviting everyone else into the Eternal Dance of God
the Trinity of Music, Smile and Dance and All. Amen.



© 101 And Then Some More Irish Blessings and Prayers, Andy Costello