Getting into the Spirit of Blessing

By Sara Eisenberg

There are many things I enjoy about visiting my older daughter in Durham, North Carolina – great company, conversation, food, a relaxed pace of life, support for localism of all kinds: music, food, crafts. But one of my favorites is the local greeting: Have a blessed day.

Other Northerners, or perhaps non-Christians, might flinch or feel disrespected. I find it sweet and welcoming, a gentle call to wake up in the moment, actually complete the circuit of connection that a human being has held out right in front of me. When I respond, I find myself nodding my head in a movement not unlike bowing the head in prayer.

In Hebrew there is a similar formulaic language to the prayer and ritual practice of blessing that begins with these six words: Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech h’Olam.

In the prayer book I grew up with, the translation was “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe.” Since I was more familiar with fairy tale kings than historical kings, this sent me on more than a few spiritual goose chases.

Over the years, with many trustworthy teachers and guides, I began to put together some of the nuances of the Hebrew words, and tease out some of the linguistic barriers. For example, Melech is “a masculine noun” that runs up against my own feminist preference for egalitarianism, as well as against all of the sages’ cautions against anthropomorphizing God. Melech can be gender-neutralized as “Ruler,” the role of bringing order to and being involved in the running of a kingdom, such as the Universe. Another English translation renders Melech as “living Spirit of the world” – a bit ethereal for me. Yet another translation is “the Force of Nature in the world.” This one really works for me as the highly kinesthetic person I am, often sensing in my body the many rhythms and collisions of these forces in daily life.

Eventually I distilled my linguistic and spiritual excursions down to the following sense:

I’m using words here for the Wordless to say, I want to connect with The Mystery of What You are, I want to rise up to meet You and I want You to come on down here and meet me, You with Your unpronounceable Name, Who is also so close to me, so within me, even while You keep the Universes spinning.

So I recite the six Hebrew words. Then, what roots these wings of my own personal prayer formula are the fill-in-the-blanks: for giving me clothes to wear and the capacity to tell day from night, for guiding my steps and strengthening me when I am weary, for bringing me face to face with a stranger who wishes me a blessed day.

Read Sara’s post, The Blessing After the Meal.

Sara Eisenberg is a wisdom guide and healer. She will facilitate Be a Blessing: Insight from the Jewish Tradition at Well for the Journey on November 17 (10 am-12 pm). Sara has studied Nondual Kabbalistic Healing with A Society of Souls’ founder Jinen Jason Shulman since 1995, and holds an M.S. in Herbal Medicine. She is in private practice at Ruscombe Community Health Center, teaches at the MD University of Integrative Health (formerly TAI Sophia Institute) and she is the founder of A Life of Practice, her online home where she integrates her work in Nondual Kabbalistic Healing, Herbal Medicine, and Creative Inquiry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well for the Journey