The Beauty of Blessing

So many conversations end with that throw-away line, ‘Bless you’ – and it is indeed a gentle and kind way to finish an encounter with someone. But just what do we mean by ‘blessing’? For some it has a religious connotation; for others it’s a way of wishing ‘all the best’.

Some blessings are specific; others are a kind of catch-all ‘I hope everything goes well with you.’ No matter how we define it, our hope is that it makes the recipient feel cared-for, protected and supported.

The priest and poet John O’Donohue defined ‘blessing’ as –

He goes on to describe how blessing can draw the person from brokenness to wholeness.

Using the analogy of a wound John O’Donohue says this –

‘When you have a cut on your hand, it always heals from the edges; the centre 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.’

There is a peculiar sense of beauty about this concept of the fruits of healing coming from afar. Sometimes we receive blessing from unexpected sources – ‘from afar.’ The benefit comes unbidden and unlooked for.

Perhaps we’ve searched all the obvious places and found them empty. The tried and trusted methods no longer work; the paths we used to tread no longer take us to a happy place. And then, suddenly, something clicks, the dark lifts and light floods in. The blessing comes from afar but it may well have been with us for a long time. As TS Eliot said –

And that is a blessing indeed…