By Jane Gordon Julien
Jan. 2, 2026
Some years ago, for a new year, the modern Irish poet John O’Donohue wrote a poem titled “Beannacht.” Beannacht is a Gaelic word that means blessing, or in some avenues, ‘safe travels.
I share this poem with you, as you step into the second day of this new year, because as we look back on the past year, we often promise ourselves we will be better. We will get in shape. We will eat more vegetables. We will speak kindly to our loved ones – and to strangers. Advice for the new year flits around us like fleas on a summertime dog.
I am not sending you advice today. Instead, I am sending you good wishes. This is a day to celebrate yourself, because there is much good in all of our lives. There is love, if we seek it. There is opportunity for kindness, if we open our hearts to it. There is beauty all around us, and within us.
“Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness,” O’Donohue once said in an interview. “Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.”
Here is the poem “Beannacht.” May it give you a moment to reflect on the riches of your life, and to rejoice in them.
And here is my wish for you in this new year: that you find the joys, wherever they may be.
Beannacht
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
— John O’Donohue (1956 – 2008)