Anam Cara

On our farm in the winter, we put the cattle out on the mountains into the winterage. There the grass has been preserved all year. Even in the worst of weather, in frost and snow, the cattle still have fresh fodder. Because the landscape is bleak, there is little shelter. Every so often out there, one notices semicircular walls. The cattle know them well. These are the “sheltering walls” when winds and storms blow up. Similarly, when you invoke a blessing, you are creating a “sheltering wall” of rest and peace around a person. Ultimately, nothing need be deemed negative if embraced rightly. So much depends not on how awkward destiny is, but rather on how openly it is embraced. This is what the “sheltering wall” of blessing can enable.

BLESSING OUR ZONES OF OMISSION

When we look back on our lives, things become clear in a way they never were while they were happening. We see again a situation where someone was being badly treated or bullied, but we remained silent. Perhaps there was a time when something unworthy was beginning, and a simple action from us would have prevented the damage, but we did nothing. At another time perhaps we were part of something that was developing negatively, perhaps in a relationship or at work, and we never had the courage to say how we felt; we simply went along with it. In this way we damaged our integrity and our dignity. It is chastening to look back and see how frequently our silence allowed damage to occur and perhaps shored up something that was cruel, negative. It is easy to feel regretful that we did not stand up clearly and courageously then. But we know that at that time it was hard, maybe impossible, to speak out, and we live with a sense of something unresolved.

Gradually over the years, a parallel life of undone things builds up. The unresolved has a lingering force and it follows us. Because this happens in the unconscious and unknown regions of our hearts, we rarely notice its effect. The undone continues to live near us; sometimes it is more powerful than what we have actually completed. What is finished lets us go free; it becomes truly part of us and is integrated and woven into memory. What remains unfinished continues to dwell in that still hungry and unformed part of the heart that could not realize itself and grow free; these gaps in our integrity stay open and hungry. This is one of the neglected areas that can be reframed by blessing.

WHO CAN BLESS? EVERYONE?

When I was a young priest I had occasion to visit a contemplative community of sisters. An old sister opened the door. Knowing that I was a new priest, she asked for my first blessing. I stood over this contemplative and drew on every resource I knew to invoke the most intimate blessing. As I was completing the blessing, it struck me how ironical this situation was: here was a contemplative who had spent over sixty years of her life navigating the searing silence and darkness of God, yet she was asking a twenty-five-year-old for his blessing. When she stood up I decided to kneel down and ask her for her blessing. She seemed utterly taken aback; she mumbled something and practically ran out of the room. She must never have had such a request for her blessing before. This was a woman who practiced a totally contemplative life, and yet the system made her feel that she could not bless, and, conversely, it made me think I could. This experience led me to question who had the authority and power to bless.

Who has the power to bless? This question is not to be answered simply by the description of one’s institutional status or membership. But perhaps there are deeper questions hidden here: What do you bless with? Or where do you bless from? When you bless another, you first gather yourself; you reach below your surface mind and personality, down to the deeper source within you—namely, the soul. Blessing is from soul to soul. And the key to who you are is your soul.

THE SOUL OF BLESSING