Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Bless My Return

It was not so long ago that as a culture we blessed each other or pointed out to each other that God does. The old biblical stories tell of a father who blesses his son, of a son who knows that he is in trouble without his father’s blessing. This blessing thing is a power transaction. A blessing lifts the one blessed into a raised position of privilege. Here is another example of magic so many of us have left behind.

I notice the email chains are often attempts to reclaim blessings and to pass them around. I think they would work if the people who sent them had a clue what they are really doing. They would look very different from the way they look, though, most of them. Sometimes I get one of those blessing chain emails that lifts the hackles on the back of my neck. Not very often.

I hope my poems go out as blessings sometimes. I don’t write this to get you to tell me they do. I write this to express that giving blessings is square in the Bodhisattva ideal to which I devote my life in the magical world where I can do such things.

One key is, though, the blessing is nearly always singular. You can’t bless large groups in any way which invokes power. Of course you can bless a group. You just don’t have enough power to gift that many at once. Throw the blessing out to the many. One of them catches it. He or she may never tell you, perhaps never even know. This way of blessing people is thankless, reminiscent of the aphorism about doing a good turn in secret.

Bless My Return

I climbed to the edge
of the world, to the tree
completely covered
with snow, ice, and light
found only there, at the edge,
about to fall off.
And me, I'm slipping
a little, resting, getting
my breath. I want you
to bless my return.
I'm afraid I'll lose myself
without your blessing.

March 9, 2009 3:21 PM

18 comments:

  1. Charles:
    I think it is a very interesting thought the one about online activity and the request for blessings. Never thought about it before, makes perfect sense dough, I have my doubts if it works for a blessing to be sent online, does it as long as it is not directed or recepted to many people?
    I was thinking that there poems like music have many levels it can be read, and that generally very few, if any person is able to get at leat a couple of the fundamental ones. I guess this understanding or connected person is who the bless is for.
    And as you say it is interesting the fact that you are blessing somebody who you did not adress the bendition directly to.
    Hope I can send you or recive a blesing from/to you.

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  2. covered in snow and ice
    and light!
    I bless you.
    And i bless you because you laugh at me, and that makes me smile and happy, thanks love

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  3. your poems and words are blessings indeed...
    I offer this comment as one who relates on a number of levels to your experience of recovery and hope, and as one who loves words and what they can do in the hands and heart of an authentic man... like you.
    it is always a gift to read what you offer here.

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  4. Jozien, this poem is indeed like certain recent pictures. Wow. Prophetic poem, a perfect picture of a hillside vision, written as it was long before the picture on the ninth day of March in midafternoon last year!!

    So laughing at you as you say, or with you as I would prefer to say, but I was here in my picture before you shared with me any picture to match my view.

    So how about that, my lovely friend? How about that?

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  5. Harlequin, you had to go and burden me with a vision to live up to. Shit. Now I'm in for it, a fat old fuck up, called an authentic man. If I'm authentic then gutter drunks have a chance. Oh yeah, they do. :)

    I only say so because I have seen a few gutter drunks take their chance right before my eyes.

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  6. I have a blogfriend (new compound word?) who ends her comments with "blessings". I think they are contagious. Since I've associated with her, I find myself saying the same to her and to others. It is a wonderful feeling to say that I wish someone else will receive blessings - not from me necessarily but from life and circumstance and God. I have the power to wish/pray the blessing on another and the belief that tells me that blessings do occur.

    I feel blessed by the strong pull of your poetry and by the spirit that you breathe forth. If I can bless someone in return in some way with my words, that in itself is a blessing.

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  7. Yes...what they said :)

    Blessings indeed

    xxx

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  8. Karen, of course blogfriend is a new and correct compound word. What happens here is a curious mix of indirect and intimate, of teaching and of rejoicing, of sharing and displaying, of frankness and diplomacy, of masque and nudity. The results over time, at least at the sites I visit and I hope here, are accumulative and lead to relationships within dialogues of great beauty.

    This is similar in my experience to the kind of thing that happens between jazz musicians but instead of music we trade vision, story, words clothed in brilliance, coming from heart. This trade between us makes changes of the kind we can with confidence call blessings, because the sum of all this activity is far more than the energy we invest.

    This takes place in a public forum. I added Feedjit to my site so that anyone can see at any time that what happens here is watched. When I look in detail, I see that not only the activity current is watched but my archive is searched. I am also informed by a former lover and another, a close local friend that they follow and never participate. One of the little red dots in Mexico is from a college student there who not long ago lived here, elder brother to another young man adopted by my former lover. He does not comment but visits regularly. Hi Jesus!

    So there it is, at least at this site, what we can call the blessing spreads in ways we cannot see, and from who? From any of you who participate, not only me. Perhaps some of you have fans who develop here and go to your site. I know of people who come to my site this way. Most come to stay awhile then drop away from active participation.

    And the networks run in parallel. There is a fellow named Tree (with an accent mark) who comments over at Woman In A Window who has a really interesting site. I quit visiting after a while, coming from Greg Lefever's because I just don't have time for all of it and have to make choices. Then he showed up at Erin's site like that and now that is a fine example of the indirect web of networks, how you can go from quality to quality along the links, or if you don't you can recommend with confidence.

    Blogfriends indeed. Blessings indeed.

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  9. Another thought, between Michelle and I, not that many words but many x's and o's and many brackets around names, all representing kisses and hugs, and what can these be but blessings? If I lean into the dream of all those kisses and hugs then I just feel my aloneness more, that I cannot get to Australia from here, but if I just receive in the simple way, do not yearn, then I am filled up both giving and receiving. Blessings indeed. Over time we come to say "I love you" and mean it. It is real because the relationship here is real.

    Sometimes the blessing gets richer than you can imagine without being there. I could tell you stories, but then we all could. Gifts of friendship. There are private exchanges between some of us, are there not? Blessings.

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  10. It is a blessing just to be read, and a blessing to read as well. I am often blessed in the posts, more often in the comments. Perhaps blessings are just connections...true and solid.

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  11. Wine and Words, I have a word for you...synergy. I have another word for you...synchronicity...and a third...serendipity. All three words point to phenomona we all experience in the right circumstances. To me you cannot reduce blessing to some other thing. There are of course connections. Of course they are very important. I don't believe they are required. I don't believe any particular human or earthly thing is required for blessings to happen, though some thing or event, connection or coincidence is always there as the vehicle of blessing. There is a divine component that remains when all things humane and mundane are stripped away.

    I have been taught I have two possible appropriate responses to blessing...to receive as openly as possible and say thank you. That is always right. Sometimes when I am aware and gifted with sight, then I am called to look around the edges of things for the divine halo that shimmers there. It is not always right to "see" the blessing this directly.

    We have said in AA that coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. His action through each other is His way of remaining anonymous by donning the costume of "God with skin on". Sometimes God requires anonymity.

    Blessing, or in another word, miracle is so common in some places that we start taking such things for granted. That of course is the down side, why God can never base His call to us on miracles or blessings. If they happen only once, we forget. If they happen often, we take them for normal and for granted. If they happen rarely, we become too attached or we doubt them with too much energy tied up in doubt.

    Still the divine "loves" to be used. Theologian Eric Butterworth said that. The divine leans toward us if we call for blessing to pass near us to some other. It is this lean toward us that is our gift to ourselves through blessing others. As I bless you, I am blessed myself because God is nearer to me.

    Hmmm. Do we really believe this stuff? I hope so.

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  12. All I know is that it feels real and right. Love in any form is a gift is it not, regardless of bodies. Our body is the least part of us.

    xxx

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  13. winged shapes and blessed returns to you my friend....מלאך

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  14. {{{Michelle}}}
    I rate bodies somewhat higher than the least part, am pretty sure I cannot be the me I recognize without a container of some kind, that finitude is required. I believe it a sacrifice to enter a body, a sacrifice again to leave it. I am not sure there is a least part, what that could mean.

    I love you and my body is somehow involved in saying that.

    Ghost, you on the other hand have left your body. I am not sure what to do with that, though I know your ectoplasmic display holds together probably through blessing and miracle. Thank you for your ghost Angel.

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  15. The commentary is rich and as always, it makes me think and feel. Thank you for that.

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  16. You can see what I mean at my place...and I do not mean the elves :D

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  17. I so appreciated your response.... I was a skinny drunk.... the bottom was also ugly.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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