Happy New Year 2021

Out With 2020

Wow. It has been a year. A year of challenge for everyone.

The pandemic burst into our lives, marched into all our dwelling places and made itself at home, settling into every room of the house, as if it would never leave.

Loss Moved In

There was a great deal of loss. Loss of friends, family, and animals. Loss of homes, jobs, and income. While we struggled under the weight of the pandemic, any type of loss seemed even more intense, heart-aching, harder to bear.

There was a loss of vacation travel. On a more somber side, there was a loss of travel to see loved ones, family and friends. We missed holidays. birthdays, births or deaths. We felt the loss of being close together, a hand shake, a kiss on the cheek, a long hug.

We are picking ourselves up now. Everyone holds out hope for an end in sight. Perhaps the vaccines along with community exposure will lift enough of us into a sort of herd immunity.

Silver Lining For Other Creatures

While we lived in lock-down, the planet breathed a sign of relief while it had a break from our incessant activity and pounding on the Earth. In nature reserves, birds were able to relax and have the security to build nests, lay eggs and hatch their young. People were not trampling on their nesting grounds.

It makes one wonder if we couldn’t allow our national parks and nature reserves to have a month or two each year without any of us stomping through them.

Less air pollution was markedly visible above the cities worldwide. Water quality improved. In Venice alone, the lack of cruise ships promoted cleaner water. Noise pollution decreased. While not everything was perfect, poaching increased during the pandemic, we could perhaps look at what was beneficial and see how we could mimic that in normal conditions.

Students Of TRT®

We had a post about Meditation In A Pandemic and touched on how The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) supports us through these challenging times.

When lockdowns become less and our activities ramp up, we may find that we have less time for a complete hands-on session. Then, certain hands-on positions are helpful. For example, if we are experiencing worry, hands-on in Head Position #2 and Front Position #3 is supportive to help us release our fears.

As we experience sorrow, we may find that hands-on in Front Position #1 and even a combination of Front Position #1 and Front Position of #3 can help to ease the pain and heartache. Another position is Back Position #4, to get in touch with our survival and our natural reaction to “hold on” to everything. We can release our grip on outer materialism and touch into living light.

For those who have studied The Second Degree of TRT®, you are able to direct universal energy to those you have lost, whether recently or long ago. In such a strong environment of loss, past wounds of loss can open again and become tender.

Directing TRT® to those you’ve lost, you are connecting to their inner light and that is forever. Directing energy supports both of you. It’s never just about directing energy outwardly. You are always a participant, an observer, a vital exchange of radiant energy expressed. As you give, you also receive universal energy.

A Blessing for The New Year

Let’s welcome a blessing for the new year. What is a blessing? The dictionary defines it as:

– the act or words of a person who blesses:
– a special favor, mercy or benefit:
– a favor or gift bestowed by God, the invoking of
God’s favor upon a person:
– praise devotion, worship, grace said before a meal:
– approval or good wishes.

Another fun fact regarding the definition of the word blessing – whenever animals gather in groups, they are identified with a collective noun, like a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, or a swarm of bees.

If you should ever stumble upon a group of unicorns, they are formally named… a blessing of unicorns.

As we say goodbye to 2020, we offer this blessing – a poem by John O’Donahue. Beannacht is the Gaelic word for blessing and currach is the word for boat.

Beannacht, by John O’Donahue

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.


Be sure to take a few moments to listen to Mr. O’Donahue recite his poem. His voice and accent capture the wild, sea-whispering Celtic wind.

In With 2021

As we enter 2021, we lift our eyes to this new cycle and we’re filled with hope that this year will be softer and kinder. We invoke a well-known blessing of our own:

May the longtime Sun shine upon you and guide your way home.

Radiant Nursing wishes you and yours a new year filled with healing and love. Stay safe. Stay healthy.

Happy New Year!

Ring Out Wild Bells

Call Out To The Wild Sky

It’s time to say goodbye to 2019 and a big hello to our new year of 2020.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)

Happy New Year 2020

As we speed around the Sun of our solar system, another year has passed.. Whirling, stumbling, whisking ourselves into a froth as we count down, and then count up, another year, another decade.

We humans like to count things. We like to measure and and delineate our hours and days. It helps us to feel organized and to make sense of a wide world without borders that looms before us.

The cosmos whirs on without a thought of numbers or counting. What is a year to the universe? Does the universe count its cycles? Maybe it measures things in a universal breath. How long is a breath-in and a breath-out in the deep, dark vastness of outer space?

Inhale. Exhale.

The Light In Our Hearts

Alfred Lord Tennyson, coming from his Victorian background, rings in Christ who represents the light. Whatever our religion or spiritual beliefs, we keep the light burning bright in our hearts as we welcome a new year and move into winter.

For students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®), we can bring to our hands-on meditations the ringing out of negativity and the ringing in of positive aspects of our lives. Students of The Second Degree of The Radiance Technique® can direct energy to one of the verses of the poem. We are able to direct energy to ideas and energies as well as concrete people and things.

The Winter Solstice has passed.

Remember, even in the dead of winter, the days are slowly growing longer, carrying us forward into spring. A little more light each day. Let that light warm your heart along the way.