Preface
An Invitation to Bless
Listening closely, we can hear how similar they sound, the words blessing and blood. Blessing, rightly understood, is the invisible bloodstream pulsating through the universe-alive and life-giving. "Just to live is holy," says the great Jewish sage Abraham Joshua Heschel. "Just to be is a blessing."
"Bless what there is, for being." Whatever it be, bless it because it exists; you need no other reason. With those words the poet W. H. Auden summarizes "the singular command" with which the universe confronts us humans. Each page of this book invites you in a different way to rise to this challenge and "bless what there is for being."
For three months or so, I wrote these blessings down-one each day-blessing whatever happened to come to my mind, from insects to the Internet, from friendship to fresh linen. I resisted the temptation to "improve" them later; they stand here as they flowed from my pen. You might open the book at random and let yourself be surprised, or you might read these blessings-maybe one a day-in the order in which they were written. You might want to check the index of keywords and pick the blessing you need at the moment. I wish for you that you become aware of how greatly you yourself are blessed and eager to pass your blessings on. Passing them on is what counts. Blessings are life-giving only as long as we pass them on. The waters of the river Jordan can teach us much about blessing: Fresh and refreshing, they leap down from the Lebanon Mountains, fill the Sea of Galilee to the brim, and make its shores an image of Paradise. Gardens, vineyards, and orchards are heavy with fruit and produce, and the lake itself teems with fish. Then these waters flow on, the Jordan continues, ending in the Dead Sea. What a difference here: The shores are barren desert, and no fish can survive in the briny water. But isn't it the same water? Yes, is the answer, indeed, it is the same water of blessing. But where blessing flows in and passes on, everything comes alive; where it flows only in and stops, it stagnates.
This accounts for the pattern of each blessing in this little book, first expressing delight in a blessing received, following with a resolution to pass it on. And this pattern is repeated over and over.
Repetition is the way time mirrors the eternal Now. Repetition with slight differences never fails to thrill our sense of beauty-a theme with variations in music, even a row of weathered fence posts along a paddock. Maybe our memory of the first sound that ever struck our budding ears in infancy, our mother's heartbeat when we were still daydreaming in her womb, gave us this love for repetition. And maybe the first stirring, then, of what would later mature into awe accounts for the important role that repetition plays in incantations and blessings. Allow yourself to feel its magic power. Ninety-nine times you will find it repeated here; the hundredth time I give you only the pattern for you to fill in some blessing that you welcome and want to pass on. Once you discover the joy this pattern can trigger, you will want to repeat it not just a hundred but innumerable times.
May this patchwork quilt of blessings help to sharpen your taste for the gift of life in its innumerable facets. May you grow ever more blessed, ever more able to bless.
1
S O U R C E O F A L L B L E S S I N G S ,
you bless us with w i n d .
Gentle or fierce, warm and humid
or icy or hot and dry, may it
caress my skin and make it tingle,
refresh my spirit and make it wide
awake so that I might to pass
on lightheartedness to everyone
I meet.
2
S O U R C E O F A L L B L E S S I N G S ,
you bless us with b r e a t h .
In and out, in and out, ever
renewing us, ever anew making us
one with all who breathe the same
air, may this blessing overf low
into a shared gratefulness, so that
with one breath I may praise and
celebrate life.
3
S O U R C E O F A L L B L E S S I N G S ,
you bless us every moment with
countless h i d d e n t h i n g s on
which our well- being depends,
though we will never know them—
from the water veins hidden deep
in the earth to the bacteria that
help us digest our food. May I pass
on blessings unnoticed for the
well- being of all.
4
S O U R C E O F A L L B L E S S I N G S ,
you bless us with f l e e t i n g
e n c o u n t e r s—m oments when
our path crosses just once with that
of another, whether the man who
holds a door open with a smile,
the receptionist who offers us a
kind word, or the child skipping
past us in the park. May these
blessings find me awake, alert, and
ready to pass on their gratuitous
sparkle by a sparkle in my own eye.
5
S O U R C E O F A L L B L E S S I N G S ,
you bless us with d r e ams—
dreams while we sleep and dreams
in our most wakeful moments.
May I be responsive to both forms
of dreams and pass these blessings
on by living a life that is faithful to
their guidance.