Today is Shabbat and with the budget cuts at my synagogue, I am not in rabbi-mode today, gathering together all the pieces for the service tonight. Instead, I am in normal (whatever the heck that is) person mode, getting ready to celebrate Shabbat at a special dinner which will also celebrate the birthday of a good friend. What to bring? We were asked to bring a blessing.
I discovered a moving book by John O'Donohue entitled To Bless the Space Between and as I chose this blessing for my friend's celebration of her birth, I thought "if only we each could be blessed like this for each and every day of our lives," and so, let it be......here is a blessing for you to savor and enjoy as you celebrate your daily life.
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother, who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here, with no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed by those who looked for you,
And found you, their kind hands urgent
To open a blue window in the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never noticed,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the earth's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence to hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness to be enfolded again
Anew by the miracle of your being.
May we each and all be so blessed.
Remember, the new link to this blog and my Virtual Classroom and my new website is now:
www.NatureRabbi.com
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