To be in the world is to be distant from the homeland of wholeness. We are confined by limitation and difficulty. When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness. We use the word foreshadow for the imperfect representation of something that is yet to come. We could say that a blessing “forebrightens” the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time.
The word blessing comes from the Old English: Blêtsian, blêdsian, blœˆdsian. As intimated in the sound of blêdsian it means “to sanctify or consecrate with blood.” It is interesting that though the word blessing sounds abstract, a thing of the word and the air, in its original meaning it was vitally connected to the life force. In ancient traditions blood was life; it connected the earthly, the human, and the divine. To bless also means to invoke divine favor upon.
We never see the script of our lives; nor do we know what is coming toward us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or sequence. A blessing is different from a greeting, a hug, a salute, or an affirmation; it opens a different door in human encounter. One enters into the forecourt of the soul, the source of intimacy and the compass of destiny.
Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.
BLESSING IS FOR THE PILGRIM MIND
There is an implicit wholeness in the human heart; it is a huge treasure house that we draw on every day. Ultimately it is what anchors and guides us. A simple metaphor for this is a physical wound. When you have a wound in your hand, it always heals from the edges; the center is the last place to heal. Clearly it is not the wound that has finally relented and decided to heal itself. Rather it is the surrounding health and wholesomeness of your body that invades the stricken place with healing. The mind of blessing is wise, and it knows that whatever torments or diminishes a person cannot be healed simply from within that diminishment; consequently it addresses the wholeness and draws that light and healing into the diminished area. When someone blesses you, the fruits of healing may surprise you and seem to come from afar. In fact, they are your own natural serenity and sureness awakening and arriving around you.
In my family, our parents always insisted before and after meals, at the rosary, and at the Angelus time that we bless ourselves and say the appropriate prayers. Lately that simple ritual has come back to me with new echoes: Bless yourself. If each of us has the ability to shape and form our lives through our thinking, do we not also have a huge ability to bless our lives?
BLESSING CAN MAKE DISTANCE KIND AND FORGIVING
While we live in the world, we always live in distance. Often the greatest distance is not physical but mental. Maya Angelou has said, “And lovers think quite different thoughts while lying side by side.” Often the nature of one’s mind is what separates us most from another. There is also the emotional distance when some hurt or wound constructs a wall between friends. In the west of Ireland, we share the interesting phrase: “I have fallen out with someone.” Once the bond of kinship and togetherness is broken, you fall out of it; i.e., you fall into distance again. Though distance can have many forms of separation, it need never be spiritual. One can still continue to remain close in spirit to the distanced one.
The beauty of blessing is that it recognizes no barriers—and no distances. All the given frontiers of blockage that separate us can be penetrated by the loving subtlety of blessing. This can often be the key to awakening and creating forgiveness. We often linger in the crippling states of anger and resentment. Hurt is always unfair and unexpected; it can leave a bitter residue that poisons the space between us. Eventually the only way forward is forgiveness. We tend to see forgiveness as the willingness to see beyond what has been done to us; and it is. But the gift of forgiveness is also a gift to us. When we forgive, we free ourselves. No longer do we hang, sore and torn from the injury done to us. Even though it goes against the grain at first, when we practice sending blessing to those who have injured us, forgiveness begins to become possible. It is always amazing to meet someone who has been hurt, and find that they have broken out of the trap of victimhood and managed to bring compassion and forgiveness to the one who wronged them. They have gone beyond the emotional geometry of the situation, beyond reaction, beyond the psychology of it. They have transcended the natural structure of expectation and managed to tap into some deeper flow of destiny that can integrate and overcome the injustice of hurt. They have entered a vision larger than the wounded view from the present situation. In situations you would expect to be wired with hard lines of justified resentment and bitterness, it is always surprising to discover beneath the surface fluent veins of compassion and forgiveness.
“WHILE HE WAS STILL A LONG WAY OFF…”
There is no distance in spiritual space. This is what blessing does: it converts distance into spiritual space. It is as though the very idea of blessing was designed for the traveler who is still far from home. Some of the tranquillity and completion of the destination itself sets out to approach and embrace the one who is still a long way off. The approach of blessing is reminiscent of the father who is at the door looking out, awaiting the return of the prodigal son; the lovely phrase is: “While he was still a long way off.” On the journey, the pilgrim will have to traverse thresholds that will test every conviction and instinct. It is especially at such thresholds that the plenitude of blessing is needed.
On our farm in the winter, we put the cattle out on the mountains into the winterage. There the grass has been preserved all year. Even in the worst of weather, in frost and snow, the cattle still have fresh fodder. Because the landscape is bleak, there is little shelter. Every so often out there, one notices semicircular walls. The cattle know them well. These are the “sheltering walls” when winds and storms blow up. Similarly, when you invoke a blessing, you are creating a “sheltering wall” of rest and peace around a person. Ultimately, nothing need be deemed negative if embraced rightly. So much depends not on how awkward destiny is, but rather on how openly it is embraced. This is what the “sheltering wall” of blessing can enable.
BLESSING OUR ZONES OF OMISSION
When we look back on our lives, things become clear in a way they never were while they were happening. We see again a situation where someone was being badly treated or bullied, but we remained silent. Perhaps there was a time when something unworthy was beginning, and a simple action from us would have prevented the damage, but we did nothing. At another time perhaps we were part of something that was developing negatively, perhaps in a relationship or at work, and we never had the courage to say how we felt; we simply went along with it. In this way we damaged our integrity and our dignity. It is chastening to look back and see how frequently our silence allowed damage to occur and perhaps shored up something that was cruel, negative. It is easy to feel regretful that we did not stand up clearly and courageously then. But we know that at that time it was hard, maybe impossible, to speak out, and we live with a sense of something unresolved.
Gradually over the years, a parallel life of undone things builds up. The unresolved has a lingering force and it follows us. Because this happens in the unconscious and unknown regions of our hearts, we rarely notice its effect. The undone continues to live near us; sometimes it is more powerful than what we have actually completed. What is finished lets us go free; it becomes truly part of us and is integrated and woven into memory. What remains unfinished continues to dwell in that still hungry and unformed part of the heart that could not realize itself and grow free; these gaps in our integrity stay open and hungry. This is one of the neglected areas that can be reframed by blessing.