Blessings
I wrote a blessing for my great-niece Clementine (born Feb. 19) and now that a great-nephew is expected I am contemplating what blessing I hope to offer for this newest addition to our family. This business of writing blessings is a challenge as so much feels trite and generic and already trademarked by Hallmark (so suspiciously generated by AI). I also do not want to simply craft a version of what I already wrote for Clementine much as I love N. Scott Momaday’s “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee”.
Fortunately for me I am reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead which has me thinking much about the ways we want to bless and inspire our beloved children (in the broadest sense of those words) and how these rituals are expressed in so many cultures (see the featured image of blessing cards from Taiwan, for example). Note: I’m reading Gilead for my Reading the USA Challenge and highly recommend!
This contemplation also sent me to the Poetry Foundation website to search for other blessing poems (note: I’m usually a Poets.org girl, but the Gauntlet already had me on the PF site). There I encountered some old favorites but also much new inspiration, such as dem Blessings #29. I do not know where this journey will take me, but it is certainly one worthy of every writer even if you do not have an imminent birth as inspiration. After all (waving hands in a wild gesture encompassing the world), we all need to put more blessings out in the world.
What blessings do you hope for our children? What blessings do you hope for the world?
Image by Nicole Lee from Pixabay
