On Blessing

Who gets to do it? How do you know one when you see one? Blessings as the lost kin to gratitude

Once a month, the computer generates a summary of activity from the shop website (www.lavictoriana.com- in case youre interested) where we sell a large number of handmade botanically based products and medicines. This month I saw there were only three pages people actually lingered on. Twelve people looked at some first aid things and three had stayed on the salves page -but 271 people had all gone to hang out on the page that wasn’t selling anything at all. It is a little how-to page called “The Blessing of the Blessingway” and it describes the backstory and then a step by step guide with options, for how the reader can conduct thier own Blessingway ceremony for a pregnant woman as an alternative to a conventional baby shower. I wrote the article because I didnt want people asking to hire me to conduct baby blessings. I have officiated many, as part of my role as midwife or freind and I love to do them, but not as a paid professional for people I don’t know. I think half the beauty of it is that it can be an organic ritual bonding people around the pregnant mother as she- and her close community- prepare to welcome her baby, and acknowledge her transition to mother— done by and with her people.

I remember being in my early twenties when Mary Thunder Woman came to town. As her name suggests, she was an Indigenous shamanic leader from North America who was giving some workshops on healing and spirituality. What struck me about her was that she was blessing people left and right; just saying it like that: I bless you. Blessings upon you. May your day be blessed. This crystal will bless you, and so on. Besides people saying Bless you after I sneezed, or snarky people in the south saying: “Bless her heart” as a prelude or afterthought to a criticism about someone, I had always wondered how someone got the authority to bless someone else. Until then, I’d only seen it done in the context of organized religions, where the specially assigned or ordained person got to bless everyone else in God’s name. I felt intimidated to even imagine being able to actually bless someone, almost likehow I would feel about wielding tinkerbell’s wand and sprinkling fairy dust- I didnt feel qualified to cast any spells. I didnt know who had told Mary Thunder Woman she was allowed to bless everyone and anyone all she liked, but it freed up something in me.

Then I became a midwife. I didnt need any doctrine to tell me I was presencing Holy work, women giving birth; dando la luz. I didnt need special instuction to bless every new being coming onto the earth out of some brave and awestruck woman, to bless the birthing family themselves for allowing me to be part of something so miraculous, to feel myself blessed. I did read in some midwifery manual somewhere that if a baby died on our watch, as midwives we are the first and the natural resource to baptize that baby right in the birthing bed, if the parents wanted it, with the water of our own tears if need be, or the water in the glass next to the bed. The word blessing comes from pagan roots - the old Germanic derivative word for blood: blotan, or bloedsian- consecrating and making holy from the blood. Thats what every woman does, every time she turns her blood into a body and brings it forth, or offers up her monthly blood to water her plants, for that matter.

Once, I served as interpreter for a woman doing her doctoral research on the lives of the beggar women who sat on the sidewalks and church steps here in town.She came and sat with maybe a dozen or more street beggars for several months at a time over a period of several years.Almost every time they recieved a coin in thier basket or palm, they would hold up thier hands and offer up a blessing to the giver. Sometimes the basic Dios te bendiga but many times, especially for my freind ,there was a long recitation of blessings bestowed upon her, her family, thier health, thier work, their travels, thier tables, thier future generations. These women’s blessings felt way bigger than the coinage they had recieved. They did not need special titles or followers in order to dispense them. They could talk to and for Divine blessing as well as the next person, something I myself had long wondered if I was allowed.

Nowdays you can go just about anywhere and buy the wall plaque, the ahstray, the throw pillow, the tee shirt that say: #blessed. Being blessed is non denominational.

We just forgot. Now we want to hire an Officiant or Ceremonialist to bless us or our children or our union. We need to encourage one another to create our own ceremonies and blessings again, born from this awareness that the blessings are already bestowed, and it is the reclamation and recognition of this that we bring forth.

Of course, one person’s blessing could be another person’s curse -my husband used to tease some of my freinds by saying: may you be blessed with many many children- which always drew quick protests. In his mother’s day, having her thirteen children actually was considered a blessing, more people to help out- but nowdays many of us would consider this a curse.

I am reminded of the folk tale about the poor farm family whose only hope and posession was a horse they had bred to be a race horse

A storm blew up one day and knocked out the fences around the horse. Such a curse! The wife wailed. Blessing or curse, we shall see, the husband said. A few weeks later, the horse returned with five wild horses in tow. Wow what a blessing! Cried the wife. Blessing or curse, we shall see, says the husband. The son begins to train the other horses, and falls off one and breaks his leg. Oh God what a curse! Says the mother. Blessing or curse, we shall see, mumbles the father. A few days later, the Captain of the Royal Army rides up to the farm, insisting every home give up thier young sons to fight in the war. But the farmer’s son cannot be forced to go, as he is injured. What a blessing! Says the mother. Blessing or curse, we shall see, says the father. Slowly the son recovers, and since he can no longer ride or train the horses, he dedicates himself to the family garden. On his way back from rounding up all the young men to go fight, the Royal Army captain stops at the farm for water for his horses, and sees the beautiful gardens. Who has made such beauty here? I demand you give us your son to come work at the palace garden, says the Captain. Oh such a curse! Weeps the mother, beside herself at losing her only child to the palace. Blessing or curse, we shall see, says the sad father. A few months go by, and the royal Princess is looking out her castle window, admiring the garden and sees the farmer boy tending the plants. They fall in love, and you can guess the rest- they marry and … blessing or curse, we shall see…

There is an old proverb that says: If fate throws a knife at you, you can catch it either by the blade or the handle.

Maybe blessings are in the eye and heart of the beholder.

All one needs to be able to bless others is an awareness that they have blessings to share. All one needs is the consciousness that blessings abound, so why not pluck one off the tree of life and pass it along? Blessings are like the lost kin to gratitude. Most tribal or community based groups already knew this. They didnt need to go around deciding who was allowed to dispense the blessings to whom, they all knew they were part of a collective blessing, that of being alive and being provided for by the planet herself that led them to create rituals of gratitude for the realization they were all, by virtue of being alive, inherently blessed.