Here are some resources which will be helpful to you in creating your time of prayer. You can use this form to receive an email with your own selection from some other music and prayer resources.
Oscail mo Chroí (Video)
Miss me but let me go
Nothing Gold Can Stay
In Lieu of Flowers
The Window
When death will knock at your door
A Simple life but Close to God
Gone only from our sight
Little Star (Video)
Further resources for prayer and reflection
Deirdre Ní Chinnéide – Oscail mo Chroí
Miss me but let me go
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little, but not too long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that we once shared
Miss me but let me go.
For this is a journey we all must take
And each must go alone
It’s all a part of the master plan
A step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick at heart
Go to the friends we know
And bury the sorrow in doing good deeds
Miss me but let me go.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
In Lieu of Flowers
Shawna Lemay
A few years ago I read a friend’s father’s obituary on Facebook. His father had requested in lieu of flowers, please take a friend or loved one out for lunch.
Although I love flowers very much, I won’t see them when I’m gone. So in lieu of flowers: Buy a book of poetry written by someone still alive, sit outside with a cup of tea, a glass of wine, and read it out loud, by yourself or to someone, or silently.
Spend some time with a single flower. A rose maybe. Smell it, touch the petals.
Really look at it.
Drink a nice bottle of wine with someone you love.
Or, Champagne. And think of what John Maynard Keynes said, “My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.” Or what Dom Perignon said when he first tasted the stuff: “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!”
Take out a paint set and lay down some colours.
Watch birds. Common sparrows are fine. Pigeons, too. Geese are nice. Robins.
In lieu of flowers, walk in the trees and watch the light fall into it. Eat an apple, a really nice big one. I hope it’s crisp.
Have a long soak in the bathtub with candles, maybe some rose petals.
Sit on the front stoop and watch the clouds. Have a dish of strawberry ice cream in my name.
If it’s winter, have a cup of hot chocolate outside for me. If it’s summer, a big glass of ice water.
If it’s autumn, collect some leaves and press them in a book you love. I’d like that.
Sit and look out a window and write down what you see. Write some other things down.
In lieu of flowers,
I would wish for you to flower.
I would wish for you to blossom, to open, to be beautiful.
The Window
Rumi
Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly.
When death will knock at your door
Rabindranath Tagore
On the day when death will knock at your door
What will you offer to him?
Oh, I will set before my guest
The full vessel of my life.
I will never let him go with empty hands.
All the sweet vintage
Of all my autumn days and summer nights,
All the earnings and gleanings of my busy life
Will I place before him
At the close of my days
When death will knock at my door.
A Simple life but Close to God
Peig Sayers
It is a simple life we lived here,
but nobody could say that it was comfortable.
Often during life I have known God’s holy help,
because I was often in the grip of sorrow from which I could not escape.
When the need was greatest,
God would lay his merciful eye on me,
and the clouds of sorrow would be gone without trace.
In their place would be a spiritual joy whose sweetness I cannot describe here.
There are people who think this island is a lonely place,
but the peace of the Lord is here.
We helped each other, and lived in the shelter of each other.
But now my life is spent, like a candle,
and my hope is rising every day
that I’ll be called into the eternal kingdom.
May God guide me on this long road I have not travelled before.
I think everything is folly except for loving God.
Gone only from our sight
I am standing on the seashore.
Suddenly a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze,
And starts out for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
And I stand and watch her until at length she is only a ribbon of white cloud
Just above where sea and sky mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her,
And just at that moment when someone at my side says; “There! She’s gone!”
There are other voices ready to take the glad shout,
“There! She comes!”
And that is dying.
A Psalm for the dying.
Relatives and friends, I am about to leave:
My last breath does not say “goodbye,”
For my love for you is truly timeless,
Beyond the touch of boney death.
I leave myself not to the undertaker,
For decoration in his house of the dead,
But to your memory, with love.
I leave my thoughts, my laughter, my dreams
To you whom I have treasured beyond gold and precious gems.
I give you what no thief can steal,
The memories of our times together:
The tender, love filled moments,
The successes we have shared,
The hard times that brought us closer together
And the roads we have walked side by side.
I also leave you a solemn promise
That after I am home in the bosom of God,
I will still be present,
Whenever and wherever you call on me.
My energy will be drawn to you by the magnet of my love.
Whenever you are in need, call me;
I will come to you, with my arms full of wisdom and light
To open up your blocked paths,
To untangle your knots and to be your avenue to God.
And all I take with me as I leave is your love
And the millions of memories of all that we shared.
So I truly enter my new life as a millionaire.
Fear not nor grieve at my departure,
You whom I have loved so much,
For my roots and yours are forever intertwined.
You can use this form to receive an email with your own selection from some other music and prayer resources.
Little Star by Deirdre Ní Chinnéide
Further resources for prayer and reflection
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