Archive for the Lent category

Etty Hillesum recognized both her capacity for hatred and the need to let it go. On a February day in 1942, she notes the martyrdom of a young man; she comments on how he had played the mandolin, and had a wife and child. She runs into a friend and talks with him about the […]

In her diaries, Etty Hillesum bore witness to what was happening not only in the world around her but also the world within her—the one place Hitler’s troops could not invade. Amid the mounting terrors that the Nazis were inflicting, Etty documented and reflected on the dailiness of her life. She wrote of the complexities […]

As we enter into the fifth week of Lent, the readings for this week come from a chapter of Sacred Journeys titled “Bearing Witness: Etty Hillesum.” We traveled briefly with Etty earlier in this season when she appeared in a couple of reflections, including this one. Invocation God of history, you are present with all […]

John O’Donohue writes, “When you are in a certain place, great love or kindness happens; it imprints itself on the ether of the place. When we pass there, hungry and needy in spirit, that loving imprint shines on us like an icon. In folk culture one always knew where to go when sorrow darkened the […]

Where do blessings come from? From what do we fashion them? What elements go into a blessing, and how does a blessing reveal what is elemental—essential, basic—in our lives? As we near the end of this week of exploring elemental blessings, today’s reflection from Sacred Journeys continues the letter to a friend for whom I […]

In her introduction to The Book of Blessings, Marcia Falk writes, “If you are looking for the heart and soul and bones of Hebrew prayer, you will find them all in the blessing. A blessing—in Hebrew, b’rakhah—is a special kind of utterance that can turn a moment into an event. Blessings intensify life by increasing […]

To offer a blessing is an intimate act that acknowledges that we are connected with another and that we desire the wholeness of that person—or that place, or whatever it is that we are blessing. A blessing is a reminder that God has not designed us to live by our own devices; we are bound […]

In his brilliant essay “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing,” John O’Donohue writes, “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 […]

This week finds us exploring the act and the art of blessing, and how we find blessings in the elements that make up our lives and our world. In their book Earth Prayers, Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon write of how offering a blessing “is neither a simple benevolent wish nor an act of hubris. […]