The Blessing Path: a Spirituality & Practice website offering

The Blessing Path: a month's worth of quotes, practices, and prayers for this multi-faith practice.

The Celtic people charted the rhythms of the day with special blessings for getting up, cooking, working in the fields, eating, and tending the fire. The Jewish path has been called the Blessing Way because there are blessings for every imaginable situation. In the Christian tradition, people are used to having clergy offer blessings at various rituals and ceremonies. But this spiritual practice can be used by anyone. In his book Blessing: The Art and the Practice, David Spangler notes:

"At heart, giving a blessing is really quite simple. We innately know how to do it, precisely because it comes from the heart, from a sense of caring and helpfulness. Every time you create safety and reassurance where before there was fear, you are giving a blessing. Every time you perform an act of kindness, providing money where there was poverty, shelter where there was vulnerability, food where there was hunger, love where there was loneliness, comfort and encouragement where there was despair and depression, you are being a blessing. There is no special technique other than having an open, generous heart and a loving, aware mind."

We have divided this map to the Blessing Way into three parts: (1) definitions or approaches to the art of blessing, (2) spiritual practices of blessings, and (3) blessing prayers. For those who want to post a quote in a prominent place to remind themselves to do blessings throughout the month, here are a few choices:

• "To be blessed is to be oneself a blessing."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• "To bless is to put a bit of yourself into something."
— Macrina Wiederkehr and Joyce Rupp

• "Blessing is the lifeblood throbbing through the universe."
— David Steindl-Rast

• "Blessing is a way of acknowledging that the God who created us goes on lavishing life upon us all our days."
— Joan Chittister

• "When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world."
— Rachel Naomi Remen

May you be blessed on this blessing path.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Click here for The Blessing Path webpage link.

c. 2007 All Rights belong to Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat