Meditation: June 29th, 2025
Physical Setting & Preparation
Create a space that honors both shadow and light—perhaps dim your surroundings but leave one bright source of illumination, like sunlight streaming through partially closed curtains or candlelight casting dancing shadows on the wall. Place something broken yet beautiful nearby: a cracked stone, weathered wood, or wilted flowers that still hold traces of their former glory. Let your hands rest on something textured that speaks of time's passage—driftwood smoothed by endless waves, or fabric worn soft by countless washings. The air should feel thick with possibility, like the moment before dawn when dreams still cling to waking consciousness.
Today's focus emerges from late June's deepening complexity—that time when summer's peak begins its inevitable turn toward harvest and reflection. We explore two profound emotional currents: devastated (the complete dissolution that comes when all structures fall away) and enchanted (the magical recognition of life's infinite mystery and beauty).
Opening Invocation | Fosgladh
Màthair na h-Oidhche is an Là
(Mother of Night and Day)
Breathe into the sacred space between destruction and wonder, where your heart has been cracked open like a seed split by its own irrepressible growth. Feel how devastation has not diminished you but made you transparent—like cathedral windows through which divine light can finally shine unobstructed.
Tha mi a' tuigsinn do dhìomhaireachdan
(I understand your mysteries)
Your breath becomes the rhythm of tides that both erode and create, that wear away ancient cliffs while depositing new beaches grain by grain. In this moment, you are both the wearing away and the accumulation, both the ending that breaks your heart and the beginning that fills you with wonder.
Body of the Working | Corp
Ann an sgrios is ann an draoidheachd
(In destruction and in magic)
Allow yourself to feel the full weight of what has been devastated within you—those dreams that crumbled like autumn leaves, those relationships that dissolved like morning mist, those versions of yourself that simply could not survive the intensity of becoming who you truly are. Do not turn away from this sacred breaking. The earth knows this process intimately.
Feel how every mountain was once higher before wind and water carved it into its current beauty. Every river valley was born from the devastating power of water refusing to be contained. Every fertile plain was created by the complete destruction of ancient mountain ranges ground down to soil over millions of years. Your devastation is not failure—it is the earth's own creative process working through your human heart.
Tha gràdh ann an gach briseadh
(There is love in every breaking)
Now turn toward the enchantment that lives like hidden treasure in the ruins of what you thought you knew. See how devastation has cleared away the false structures that blocked your vision, revealing the magic that was always present but obscured by your need to have life look a certain way. Like forest floors after wildfire, where rare flowers bloom that only appear after intense heat has cracked open their dormant seeds.
Your enchantment is not separate from your devastation—it is born from it. The crack in your heart is where the light gets in. The places where you have been most thoroughly broken are now doorways through which wonder enters like morning light through cathedral windows, illuminating beauty you never knew existed.
The Deep Working | An Obair Dhomhain
Thig sìos gu bonn na mara
(Descend to the bottom of the sea)
Sink now into the deepest places where devastation and enchantment merge like streams converging in an underground cave. Here, in the earth's secret chambers where pressure transforms coal into diamonds and heat forges crystals from common stone, you discover the profound truth: nothing is ever truly lost, only transformed into forms so beautiful you could never have imagined them.
Feel how your most devastating losses have become the compost from which your deepest magic grows. Every relationship that ended taught you something about love you could learn no other way. Every dream that died cleared space for dreams you didn't even know you carried. Every identity that dissolved revealed layers of self you had never touched.
Ann an dorchadas, tha solus air a bhreith
(In darkness, light is born)
Rest in the profound enchantment of discovering that you are indestructible. Not because nothing can hurt you—everything can and does—but because you are made of the same substance as stars that collapse into supernovas and birth new galaxies, as forests that burn completely and return more vibrant than before, as the moon that disappears each month only to emerge renewed.
Tha mi mì-bhasmhor mar na reultan
(I am immortal like the stars)
Your devastation has revealed your true nature: you are not a thing that can be broken but a process that cannot be stopped. Like water that flows around every obstacle, that finds a way through the smallest crack, that transforms into vapor and returns as rain, you are life itself expressing through the temporary form of a human being. You cannot be diminished—only transformed into new expressions of infinite beauty.
Let yourself feel the overwhelming enchantment of this recognition. You are magic pretending to be ordinary, eternity masquerading as a brief lifetime, the earth's own consciousness learning to know itself through your eyes, your heart, your hands touching this broken and beautiful world.
Afterthought | Smuain Dheiridh
Take a moment to contemplate:
What if your most devastating experiences have been the earth's way of initiating you into the deeper mysteries—preparing you to recognize the magic that has always been present in the seeming ordinariness of existence?
Closing Blessing | Beannachd Dheiridh
Beannachd air gach crìoch is gach toiseach
(Blessing on every ending and every beginning)
As you return to ordinary awareness, carry with you the knowing that you are both devastated and enchanted, both broken and more beautiful than ever. The cracks in your heart are not flaws but features—places where light enters and love flows out into a world desperate for the magic you carry.
Tha mise agus an talamh mar aon
(I and the earth are as one)
You are devastation and enchantment dancing together in the eternal spiral of becoming. Your breaking open has revealed your true nature as magic itself, and your wonder at existence is the earth's own amazement at her infinite creativity expressing through countless forms including the magnificent form of you.
Gu robh beannachd ort gu là do bhàis
(May blessing be upon you until the day of your death)
Thank you, Wendy.
The language reads like Scots Gaelic, not the Gaeilge of my schooldays. Is dóigh liom anyway