Being generous enough for your dreams

Isn’t it interesting what catches our attention?

The second line of John O’Donohue’s blessing ‘For Belonging’ has caught my eye in each reading:

May the frames of your belonging be generous enough for your dreams.

Each time, it takes me to a different place.

I know what it is like for others to define belonging, to set the threshold, and to say what is acceptable. I also know how that confines and stifles our sense of flourishing, often without our realising it.

The expectations of those close to us also shape what we believe in ourselves and where our dreams can take us. Whether that is ‘people like us do things like this…’ or simply absorbing low expectations.

And how we name ourselves can stretch our belief in possibilities or limit who we think we can be. What do you dare to call yourself? Because it matters how we describe ourselves to ourselves.

May the frames of your belonging be generous enough for your dreams.

Listen to what you hear yourself say in response to these words from John. It might be revealing…

Let’s not limit our dreams nor confine those of others.

Pause. See differently. Re-story…

~ the full text of this blessing is in Saturday’s post: A Blessing for Belonging - receiving the gift. It is from John O’Donohue’s last book, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings, Bantam Press, 2007