Thanksgiving Blessing

 

May You Be Blessed

“may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love you back   may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

Lucille Clifton (“blessing the boats” as reprinted in Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything)

I discovered this blessing by Lucille Clifton in Anne Lamott’s book quite by accident, but it somehow seems an appropriate blessing for the turning of this terrible year. We could all use a long year of smooth sailing on calm waters. So many of us will be getting together for Thanksgiving tomorrow despite the warnings from the CDC to stay home. Some quirk of nature makes us feel we are exempt from this virus, that somehow the warnings are overblown. With more than a quarter million of us dead and more hospitalizations than we have ever seen before, I’m not sure how we are still telling ourselves that and believing it. I know this, as someone who lives alone, I crave company, conversation, and community. And I am an introvert, so I can imagine how desperate extroverts are feeling after almost a year of isolation. It has been a lonely time.

The Irish poet and priest, John O’Donohue wrote beautiful blessings for all occasions. He said, in To Bless the Space Between Us that we should learn to bless each other. Here is an excerpt from that book:

“When a blessing is invoked, it changes the atmosphere. Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness. In the light and reverence of blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way. In a dead wall, a new window opens, in the dense darkness a path starts to glimmer, and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew. It is ironic that so often we continue to live like paupers though our inheritance of spirit is so vast. The quiet eternal that dwells in our souls is silent and subtle; in the activity of blessing it emerges to embrace and nurture us.”

This Thanksgiving and even this terrible year of 2020, deserve to be blessed. Let us leave it, not with a curse, but with thankfulness that it has taught us how very much we have to be grateful for—for the love of family and friends, for community of body and spirit, and for this beautiful earth. Tomorrow, as you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal, bless one another. O’Donohue promises this: “Whenever you give a blessing, a blessing returns to enfold you.” Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

                                        In the Spirit,

                                        Jane