Reverend Dr. Susan Veronica Rak, UURMaPA Board President … March, 2025
Well, how are you all doing? We’ve been witnessing some pretty frightful things (life-destroying fires and floods, a season fraught with soul-draining, system-destroying and economic mayhem—at least here in the U.S.), and for each of us some personal struggles and triumphs.
However it is with your spirit at the moment, I do hope you are looking forward to joining your fellow UURMaPAns for the Spring Conference, coming up in just a couple of short months! It seems like it will be an opportunity to build resilience to face whatever besets us, and also to feel the joy of being together, even if it’s virtual.
Back in January, I did a guest preaching gig and was hard-pressed to conjure a suitable topic and service to meet their situation. I started with a general idea and went from there, choosing the title “Be the Blessing.”
The days before the service I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Me, a blessing? Bless who, or what … and when? Now, in this moment, we may not all feel particularly blessed or strong enough to take up the challenge of blessing anyone. So I’m just going to share a snippet of what I wrote; maybe it will spur some thoughts in you.
Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that the best way to discover what giving blessings or being a blessing is all about is to pronounce a few.
A blessing begins in noticing—seeing what is before us as it is…as hard as that may be at times. And this seeing, this noticing, should take us out of ourselves, shift our focus from our own navel, our own importance or centrality, and open ourselves to others.
“Start throwing blessings around,” Taylor continues, “and chances are you will start noticing all kinds of things you never noticed before.”
When you’re in line at the store, maybe impatiently tapping your foot or nudging your cart, try blessing the people around you. The person in front of you, the clerk at the register (if there is one) or the person trying to herd the crowds through the self-checkout lines; the increasing line of people behind you, the whining child and the fumbling adult juggling too many things.
Every one of them is dealing with something significant. We just don’t know for sure, but we can still care. They are heading somewhere, just as you are. And they are no more certain of what’s happening at the other end than you are.
To pronounce or offer a silent blessing is to offer attention and pay heed to what happens in the air between you and that other person—and all those other people. Something shifts. They may never notice you or feel that blessing directly, but something changes inside you. Something is pulling you into community, as we are drawn to one another by an invisible thread. And perhaps in this we gain more courage to find ways to protest and resist what is wrongful and corrupt.
We offer blessings, not because we are divine beings who have super powers that give people special things, but because we are human beings who can learn and appreciate what a blessing is and how to give them away.
To choose to bless the world, as Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker once advised us, brings us into community. And in it we become that blessing.
Friends, fellow UURMaPAns, it may not be much, but it’s what I can offer in this moment.
Peace and blessings, Susan