After an afternoon at the laundromat, I gathered up some Girl Scout Cookies and took the subway to pick up My Kid from school and take her to The Husband’s office at Rockefeller Center.
While The Husband and My Kid delivered the cookies to various co-workers I checked out the shelf of free books and found several of mild interest.
One book, The Gentle Art of Blessing, originally published in France as; Vivre sa spiritualite au quotidien, by Pierre Pradervand, caught my eye.
As I read through his list for “blessing as a spiritual practice” I thought of the signing of the healthcare reform bill I watched on TV earlier in the day and I thought of Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy and all the others who held on and didn’t fall prey to cynicism and were able to maintain their own stamina in order to be to hammer away at the issue of health care reform and vote the way they did in this political climate. The legislation isn’t perfect, of course. Like buying a house, or renting an apartment, what one can afford and what is available is reality and then the compromises begin. The list of wants, which for me include built in bookshelves, wrap around porches and working fireplaces and a turret get smaller and smaller until finally most are abandoned. In New York City, even more; washer/dryer, entryway, coat closet, kitchen as a separate room, the belief that these are necessities are abandoned.
Still there is the feeling of success when an acceptable home is found. The passage of the healthcare bill was exciting like that. The bill, like most available real estate “needs work”. But we are glad to have it nevertheless. I wonder if any of those Members of Congress who finally voted for the passage of this healthcare reform bill had specific people in their minds that they wished to bless with this piece of legislation and that is what kept them going in the face of the current political climate. I imagine, in order to vote for this bill, some of them must have held in their hearts a few thoughts that may have been like this:
The Practice of Blessing by Pierre Pradervand
* On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth, for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the texture of the universe and awaiting each and all.
*On passing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work and play, bless them. The peace of your blessing will accompany them on their way, and its aura will be a light on their path.
*On meeting people and talking to them, bless them in their health, their work, their joy, their relationship to the universe, themselves, and others. Bless them in their abundance and their finances, bless them in every conceivable way, for such blessings not only sow seeds of healing but one day will spring forth as flowers in the waste places of your own life.
*As you walk, bless the city in which you live, its government and teachers, its nurses and street sweepers, its children and bankers, its priests and prostitutes. The minute anyone expresses the least aggression or unkindness to you, respond with a blessing. Bless them totally, sincerely, joyfully–for such blessings are a shield that protects them from the ignorance of their misdeed and deflects the arrow that was aimed at you.
*To bless means to wish, unconditionally and from the deepest chamber of your heart, unrestricted good for others and events; it means to hallow, to hold in reverence, to behold with awe that which is always a gift from the Creator. he who is hallowed by your blessing is set aside, consecrated, holy, whole. To bless is to invoke the divine care upon, to speak or think gratefully for, to confer happiness upon, although we ourselves are never the bestower but simply the joyful witnesses of life’s abundance.
*To bless all without distinction is the ultimate form of giving, because those you bless will never know from whence came the sudden ray that burst through the clouds of their skies, and you will rarely be a witness to the sunlight in their lives.
*When something goes completely askew in your day, when some unexpected event upsets your plans–and upsets you–burst into blessing. For life is teaching you a lesson, and the very event you believe to be unwanted, you yourself called forth, so as to learn the lesson you might balk against were you not to bless it. Trials are blessings in disguise, and hosts of angels follow in their path.
*To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent, universal beauty hidden from material eyes, it is to activate that law of attraction which, from the furthest reaches of the universe, will bring into your life exactly what you need to experience and enjoy.
*When you pass a prison, mentally bless its inmates in their innocence and freedom, their gentleness, pure essence, and unconditional forgiveness, for one can only be a prisoner of one’s self-image, and a free man can walk unshackled in jail, just as citizens of a free country may be prisoners of the fear lurking within their thoughts.
*When you pass a hospital, bless its patients in their present wholeness, for even in their suffering, their wholeness awaits discovery within them. When your eyes behold a man in tears seemingly broken by life, bless him in his vitality and joy, for the material senses present but the inverted image of the ultimate splendor and perfection that only the inner eye beholds.
*It is impossible to bless and judge at the same time. So hold constantly as a deep, hallowed, intoned thought the desire to bless, for truly then shall you become a peacemaker, and one day you shall behold, everywhere, the very face of God.
*P.S. And of course, above all, do not forget to bless the utterly beautiful person you are.