This poem was given to by a friend me soon after I received my early diagnosis of lymphoma ;

Now is the time of dark invitation
Beyond a frontier you did not expect
Abruptly your old life seems distant...
Nothing before has made you feel so isolated and lost.
When the reverberations of shock subside in you
May grace come to restore you to balance,
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to a new world.
May you find in yourself
A courageous hospitality
Towards what is difficult, painful and unknown.
May you learn to use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
The new qualities that will emerge in you.
May the fragile harvesting of this slow light
Help to release whatever has become false in you.
May you trust this light to clear a path
Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety
Until you feel arising within you a
Tranquility profound enough to call the storm to stillness.
May you find wisdom to listen to your illness,
Ask where it want to take you?
What it wants you to know?
What qualities of space it wants to create in you?
What you need to learn to become fully yourself
That your presence may shine in the world.
May you keep faith with your body
Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary
Which can bring this night wound gradually
Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.
May you be granted the courage and vision
To work through passivity and self-pity
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark irritation.
May you learn to receive it graciously and
Promise to learn swiftly that it may leave you
Newborn, willing to dedicate your time to birth.

Poem of blessing: "For a friend on the arrival of illness" by John O'Donahue