Lessons from a Year of Blessings

A few weeks ago, one of the regulars noticed that we were rapidly approaching a full year of blessings – and he asked if I’d consider writing a bit about “a year of giving blessings”.

I think this is a great idea, if nothing else then to celebrate the past year and all the blessings it has brought me and, hopefully, you as well. I’m not quite sure I have that many interesting things to write about, though, but I’ll give it a try and let you be the judge… 😉

(Btw, if you have no idea what I’m talking about in the first place: I perform a formal blessing ceremony each Wednesday in which I bless everybody who has signed up that week. You’ll find the most current signup option here.)

Back when I put the first offer for a formal blessing online, I had no idea what would come out of it. To be honest, I still don’t really know what will come out of it, but I can at least see a bit clearer now. Back then, I wasn’t sure how things would go, and I had no clue how long I would even offer these blessings. My thought was that I’d give it a try for a few weeks, and then re-evaluate.

Well, to say that the first few weeks were colourful is an understatement. There really is some energy flowing during such a blessing, and it took me a while to get used to it. Even now, when things are ramping up unexpectedly, e.g. with a heavy surge of more people than before, I sometimes feel it. But looking back to the beginning, I note just how much I’ve gotten used to these energies, and how much more I can handle without breaking a sweat.

I also know, though, that if the number of participants suddenly increased by the dozens, I’d probably have some growing pains again.

Btw, some of you might have noticed that when I announce the blessings e.g. in JMG’s comment section, I keep saying that each signup helps me to practice. I suppose this might sound strange, but it is what happens – the more people, the more of a workout I get. 😉

Thus one of my personal takeaways is that yep, I can handle a lot – but there are also some things to which I need to work up to, or risk knocking myself out.

A few weeks into the blessings, I realized that a. this is going to work for me, and b. this is going to work for other people, too, or they wouldn’t come back to sign up again, and c. I actually enjoy doing it.

Thus I decided to simply continue to offer these formal blessings once a week, until further notice. Yep, that could mean for the rest of my life – or it could mean I will cease doing them in a few months, for whatever reason. I’ll simply let it develop as it may.

Anyway, to this day, I enjoy performing these formal blessings, and I usually feel better afterwards than I did before.

(Very unobtrusive hint: If you, too, want to feel better after blessing things or people, I’ve published a handy manual called “Blessing: How to Get Started in 9 Simple Steps”.)

Of course, the fact that it’s enjoyable makes it much easier for me to follow through. If each weekly blessing was a slog, I probably wouldn’t be writing this text now… 😉

Still, doing something every week can be a burden at times. Thus I was rather surprised how easy it has been for me to follow through week after week. Besides the blessings being enjoyable, what surely also contributes is that once I’ve announced next week’s blessing in public, I’d feel a bit silly cancelling it unless there is absolutely no other way.

But I think there are other issues at play here as well, and I want to share them because some of you might put them to good use somewhere else in your own lives:

Before starting out, I gave a bit of thought to the way I’d structure the blessing work, i.e. when to do it, how, how often, how to have people sign up, etc. But not too much thought, as I wanted to just get started, and figured I could still improve things later.

It turned out, however, that I must have inadvertently hit a sweet spot – a setup which works really well for me in my current circumstances.

In particular, there is just the right mixture of commitment and freedom. E.g. I do the blessings on Wednesday – but I left myself the freedom to do them whenever it suits me on a particular Wednesday. Sometimes it’s first thing in the morning, sometimes late at night, or at any times in between. That makes it a lot easier to fit into my sometimes a bit erratic schedule. But at the same time, the day is fixed, and I don’t have to decide about that anew each week. I simply plan some other stuff around the fact that I do a formal blessing each Wednesday.

For me, in my current situation, this is a sweet spot, and it certainly helps in making things easy and simple for me. If my circumstances should ever change, the blessing setup will simply have to evolve with them. Or, to put it bluntly: One of my takeaways is that if a service doesn’t work for me, I won’t perform it for others for very long, or at at least not as well as I could.

As for the blessings themselves, or the way I perform them: I have found I rather like the formal setting. I still do an informal blessing on occasion, but more often than not, I note it down and include that person, plant, … in the formal blessing. There just seems to be a bit more oomph behind it – but note that this might be me, and your mileage might vary!

On the other hand, I learned that while the props are nice and well, I don’t really need them to get a blessing across. My usual setup includes a prepared altar space, donning an alb, lighting a candle, etc – but I’ve done the same weekly blessings while travelling with a minimum of fuss (I think I had a tealight each time, but could well have done without it).

Thus I feel there is a strange mixture of the power of a formal structure, without the necessity to have one. (I hope this makes sense – it sounds a bit weird, now that I write it… 🙂 )

Another thing which came up, inevitably, over the course of a year are bad days, or bad times in general. I do have my share of them, just like everybody else, and I was a bit hesitant about how that would go, and whether I might have to cancel on occasion – but it turns out it went well, and I didn’t.

That’s not to say that there might not be situations in life when I would not feel up to performing a blessing, but so far, things have been well below that threshold. It does help that the blessings don’t just generally bring good energy into my life, but have the tangible effect of making me feel better on most days, too.

On the other hand, performing such blessings even on days when life has hit hard has given me a new appreciation for the kind of service some other people perform without even mentioning it.

I recently attended a funeral where the person holding the service was a retired priest – and a friend of the deceased. With both of them being in the same age range, I’m sure there wasn’t only his own grief to deal with, but also thoughts about his own mortality, and of those of other people around him. Still, he performed that service very warmly and personally, but also very professionally.

Before starting with the public blessings, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me what an accomplishment this was. But I’ve now experienced for myself, on a very small scale, how doing a service and performing a spiritual role for others can clash with personal needs and feelings – and I have a new kind of appreciation for the people who can put their personal issues aside, even if it’s just for a little while, to perform the service their role requires.

Something unrelated, but no less impressive, is the role of the divine in these blessings. As I’ve stated before, I don’t really know where these divine blessing energies are coming from. I just know they are there, they are flowing, and they are beneficial.

Things are a little different when deities or other divine beings are involved, though. Over the course of the year, I’ve had people note their relationships to all sorts of deities, from Ganesha to Hermes, from Mother Mary to Sul. In each case, I add a little sequence where I respectfully approach the deity in question, and ask them for their blessings for person X as well.

So far, these requests seem to have been well accepted (at least as far as I can tell). Interestingly, though, the energy which flows on these occasions feels quite different from the “general” blessing energy – and also quite different from deity to deity.

(No, I’m not ready to draw any conclusions from this!)

Now looking back on this year of blessings, I’ve been contemplating what kind of influence they’ve had on my life, or whether they’ve had any influence at all.

The short but somewhat unsatisfying answer is: I’m not sure. 😉

I do feel more blessings have been coming my way. But whether there really are more, or whether I’m now just more attuned to noticing them… that’s hard to say.

I also feel that regularly blessing others has been changing and influencing me, sometimes very subtly, and in ways I can hardly put into words. The best I can say is that in everyday situations, it seems to become easier for me to act in ways which are congruent with my blessing work. But here, too, it’s hard to tell to what extent this is an actual effect of the blessings vs. just an imagined effect of me noticing certain things more.

There is the additional complication that the blessings aren’t the only things I’ve done in the past year. Thus which effects are actually due to them, and which are due to, say, my work in the Modern Order of Essenes, I honestly can’t distinguish. Of course, the different compoments of my work are constantly fertilizing each other, so… maybe dissecting things down to this level doesn’t even make sense.

In any case, I can (quite happily!) report that the blessings certainly haven’t hurt! And just the fact that they did make me feel better was a real boon in many weeks. 🙂

Have they been good for other people, or for the world in general?

Again, this is hard to tell for me, for obvious reasons. I can only go by the feedback I get, and by the fact that people keep coming back to sign up for more. Both seem to indicate that there are indeed positive effects in the lives of the people being blessed – but in the end, you need to be the judge for your own life! 🙂

Finally, the outlook: How will the second year of formal blessings look like?

Well, that’s a good question, although I’m not sure I can answer it in full quite yet. But three things I know already:

For starters, things will continue just as they are. I enjoy these blessings way too much to stop doing them – and I hope you folks will continue to sign up for them.

But I’m thinking ahead a bit, too. One thing I’d like to achieve is raise the number of people I reach with my blessings. I’m not sure yet what a good, working number of participants will be, but I feel that the world does need more blessings, and every little bit makes a difference.

Thus I’ll need to think about how to reach more people – ideally gradually over time, in order to not overload myself by handling a sudden influx of energy.

Secondly and consequentially, I’ll need to prepare for a potentially larger crowd.

So far, I can handle the number of people to be blessed on each given Wednesday just fine. I can also handle the signup process, i.e. your comments and my replies, just fine. But both things might change with more participants, and I’d like to be prepared for that.

Thus I’m considering other options for signups – if that should ever become necessary, that is. This is a bit dicey for me, because I do enjoy the interactions in the comment section very much, and I don’t quite know yet how a (for you and for me) adequate replacement process might look like.

How to handle the actual blessings for more people will also take some consideration. You might find it amusing to learn that one of the biggest challenges so far, in weeks with the most participants, hasn’t been my time commitment (I’m still fine with that, although I might reach a limit with many more people). It also hasn’t been handling the energy – as I said, I now know I can work up to higher levels. The biggest challenge in some weeks, especially in weeks with a lot of heavy garden work, has been to keep my hands raised for long enough.

(Yes, I know. I’d ask you to spare my feelings and kindly refrain from any comments which suggest working out more!)

Seriously, though, the number of participants ebbs and flows a bit between weeks, but has generally been slowly but steadily rising – and there will be a point when I can’t handle the current procedures anymore. Thus I’m planning ahead, and am thinking ahead. I’ve already got some ideas on how I might be able to handle things for more people, should the need arise. But these things need more reflection, and potentially some experimenting.

Thus there might be occasions this year when I play around with things, or offer/request you folks to participate in such an experiment.

(That’s to say, it pays to have an eye on the announcement text each week, even if it’s highly repetitive. I know that gets dull at some point, and I try to highlight changes and news at the very top, so please read at least the first paragraph or so before you sign up in any given week, ok?)

Thirdly, talking about potential changes in the future of the blessings, and somewhat in contrast with my plans to reach more people:

So far, I’ve announced the blessings in most weeks through a comment in JMG’s comment sections. However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to continue this forever. Smart as you all are, you’ve probably noticed the conundrum between “wanting to reach more people” and “wanting to announce less in the one spot I’ve announced them so far” – that’s not going to work, obviously.

Thus it’s something else I need to think about and find other ways to reach or remind people.

For now, you could help me by spreading the word – only if you feel comfortable about it, and only to people whom you think would be open to signing up. I’m not a big fan of proselytizing, and I’d hate for any of you to feel pressured into things you find uncomfortable. But maybe there are the right people you know, or maybe the chance comes up, in which case I would appreciate you mentioning this offer to others.

(And in case it wasn’t already obvious: If you want to continue to receive blessings in the future, at some point you’ll need to establish a habit of coming here on your own, without being prompted. Since I usually put the next blessing post up when I close down the previous one, this could be at any point of the week. Just sayin’… 😉 )

None of this is urgent, though, and (surprise!) I’ve got other things on my plate as well. Thus I’ll take all this one day at a time. I do believe that somebody up there is guiding my blessing service, so whatever is right will take shape in due time.

Until then, I’m very much looking forward to the second year of formal blessings. I’m very, very grateful to all of you for being here and signing up – and I do mean it when I say your signups help me to practice, so thanks a lot for that!

So… as promised, these were my thoughts – but I’d very much like to read yours, too. Please do post them in the comments if you’re so inclined. 🙂

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Image: Delaney Dawson on Unsplash