"Bless You"

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The Rev. Suzelle Lynch
May 21, 2006

There you are, sitting at your desk at work or walking down the street or down the aisles of the grocery store, and you sneeze: ah choo! “Bless you,” comes the immediate and emphatic response from someone within earshot. “Uh, thank you,” you might reply. Or maybe you don’t say anything. Or maybe you nod and smile, but grumble inwardly. Probably you don’t ask the person why they just said that, even if you’re wondering about it. They’re probably just being polite.

In one of our recent UU Orientation classes, we talked about this. We talk about a lot of things in those classes. Knowing that Unitarian Universalism is a religious tradition open to each person’s quest and questioning, class members bring up wonderful and interesting topics, and we delve into them as best we can in the limited time we have. It’s a lot of fun.

One of us confessed that he found the whole sneezing and blessing thing annoying – that’s what got us started. I shared that I’d heard the practice was left over from an ancient superstition that a person’s heart would stop for a moment when they sneezed, thus putting them in peril of dying. Saying “bless you” to the sneezer was an attempt to keep the Devil, who was always lurking about in those days, from stealing the person’s soul. I think we went on from there to talk about what it might mean to bless someone or something.

And that’s really what I want to speak about today – what it means to bless, and what a blessing is. But before I do, I have to say that curiosity got the better of me about the whole bless-you/sneezing thing, and I checked it out with the Snopes people on the internet. Snopes is the website that debunks urban myths and legends and finds out the truth about wild stories that often are circulating around the internet.

Apparently, mine is one of the common explanations for the “bless you” custom. But there are others, including that the sneeze expelled a person’s soul from their body, and “bless you” was uttered to protect the person from the Devil until the soul could zip back into the body. Another theory is that the sneeze expels a devil or evil spirit from the body, and thus the blessing, again, was protective. Another one claims that during the time of the bubonic plague, a sneeze was viewed as symbolic of a person who would soon be dying, and thus “Bless you” was commending that person’s soul to God. Yet another idea was that somehow sneezes were a portent of luck, and the blessing was uttered in recognition of the coming good luck, or an attempt on the blesser’s part to attract some of the luck to him or herself.

Fascinating, eh? But none of these explanations can be traced back to any historical evidence. Apparently the custom of blessing a sneezer was documented as far back as the Natural History written by Pliny the Elder in the year 77 of the Common Era, but he only refers to it, he doesn’t explain why people do it. So perhaps we will never know why this practice came into being. As Barbara Mikkelson, the Snopes writer on this topic says, “…the standardized responses are ordinary politenesses… so deeply trained into us that … the hardest thing to say is nothing at all.” (www.snopes.com/language/phrases/blessyou.htm)

But what does it mean to bless someone or something? What is a blessing? There is something powerful about the act of blessing, and thus our sense of being rankled when it is trivialized by ritual politeness. Sabrina Dearborn, compiler of the Children’s Book of Blessings from which I read earlier, says that a blessing is a special kind of prayer, and that when we offer a blessing, we allow a sense of the sacred quality of life to flow through us. (From Introduction, p. 6)

Another author (Elizabeth Ratisseau, compiler of a book of images and stories about mermaids, interestingly) writes, "In the tradition of ancient blessings, one tries through the power of language to throw a mantle of protection and beneficence over the receiver."

Catholic priest and much loved spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen writes, “In Latin, to bless is benedicere. The word ‘Benediction’ that is used in many churches means literally: Speaking (dictio) well (bene) … of someone. That speaks to me.” He continues, “I need to hear good things said of me, and I know how much you have the same need. Nowadays we often say: ‘We have to affirm each other.’ Without affirmation, it is hard to live well. To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. It is more than a word of praise or appreciation. It is more than pointing out someone’s talents or good deeds;…. To give a blessing is to affirm, to say ‘yes’ to a person’s belovedness.” (In “Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World” – with my gratitude to my dear friend the Rev. Dr. Sandy Bochonok)

And our dear old friend, the dictionary (www.webster.com), tells us that the word “bless” is a transitive verb that means to hallow or consecrate by religious rite or word, and comes from Middle and Old English words that mean blood, from the ancient practice of using blood in rituals of consecration. And of course, to consecrate is to make something sacred, to designate it as something suitable for holy use.

I like all of these definitions, these ways of talking about blessing. But I will admit that it took me several years after I first became a minister to become comfortable with the idea of being the one responsible for offering a blessing. I’ve since come to realize that the aspect of this that bothered me was the idea that “the minister” could somehow communicate with the holy or mediate its power in a way that others could not. A direct line to god, or something. That didn’t fit with my ideas about God, nor with my ideas about humanity.

But even so, I’ve offered a lot of blessings over the years. I’ve blessed babies and newly-married or committed couples. I’ve blessed houses. I haven’t blessed any cars or motorcycles yet, but I have blessed a bicycle, a camping tent, and a boat or two. I’ve offered grace before many meals both public and private, and invoked the spirit of life and love at graduations, anniversary celebrations, and other events. And through all that experience, all that practice, what has been confirmed for me is that blessing is an attitude of openness to something more whole than we ourselves can touch. It is a willingness to speak well of someone or something, a courageous act of expressing a high hope or a powerful intention. And it is something anyone and everyone can do.

This was originally affirmed for me by the person who initially introduced me to the idea of blessing in a meaningful way. Jo Milgrom, my seminary professor in the area of Jewish Spirituality and Art, was that person. Jo is a scholar and an observant Conservative Jew who did her best to acquaint Unitarian Universalist seminarians with the many spiritual practices of everyday Jewish life, and the traditional mandates for them. (A good source on this topic is “How to Run a Complete Jewish Household,” by Blu Greenberg)

Jo taught us that in the Jewish tradition, there is a practice of blessing that involves offering appreciation to God for many different things, including blessings for food and wine and experiences of enjoyment. Blessings to be said as we prepare to eat or drink or as we experience something. For example, before eating bread, one might say, “Blessed are Thou, O Eternal One, who brings forth bread from the earth.” Upon seeing a beautiful tree, one might say, “Blessed are Thou, O Eternal one, who has created such beauty.” There are blessings for washing hands, for seeing the sun rise or set, blessings for when something is lost or when it is found, and for when something begins or ends.

There are blessings for nearly everything from the mundane to the startling, and they are to be offered by everyone. Offering these blessings is a practice that keeps a person in touch with their sense of awe and wonder and appreciation for the world. It gives voice to those amazing feelings we have sometimes that life is nearly too beautiful to bear. It also keeps people in touch with the idea that while theirs is not the only power in the world, they do, as beings made in the image of the Holy, have the power to bless. And I would say, also, that it is a practice that allows us, in those moments when we experience failure, pain, or loss -- those moments of despair -- to reach out beyond the prison of our misery. Blessing allows us to reach out when we are low because having practiced it and made it a regular feature of our lives when we are not low, we know deep in our bones how to do it.

Rachel Naomi Remen, a doctor and counselor of those with terminal illness, points to lessons from the Kabbalah, from Jewish mysticism, shared by her Orthodox Jewish grandfather, as a way to help us ground this practice of blessing in an attractive cosmology. She writes, (in “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” pp. 2-3) “According to the Kabbalah, at some point in the beginning of things, the Holy was broken up into countless sparks, which were scattered throughout the universe. There is a god spark in everyone and everything, a sort of diaspora of goodness. God’s immanent presence among us is encountered daily in the most simple, humble, and ordinary ways. The Kabbalah teaches that the Holy may speak to you from its many hidden places at any time. The world may whisper in your ear, or the spark of God in you may whisper in your heart. …”

She continues, “One is encouraged to acknowledge such unexpected meetings with the Holy by saying a blessing. There are hundreds of such blessings (prescribed generations ago by the great teaching rabbis), each one attesting to a moment of awakening in which one remembers the holy nature of the world.” And in these encounters, it is said, the god sparks are freed, and the world begins to repair itself.

To allow a sense of the sacred quality in life to flow through us.

To affirm, to say ‘yes’ to a person’s belovedness.

To try, through the power of language, to throw a mantle of protection and beneficence over the one for whom our words are spoken.

To dedicate something to holiness, to wholeness.

To praise God -- or some power which we cannot name or see -- for life and its wonders.

To acknowledge with reverence a larger wholeness of which each of us is part.

All of these are blessing. But to what end do we bless? Surely it cannot simply be about doing something nice and vaguely spiritual, like saying “Bless you” when someone near us sneezes, and then going about our usual business feeling good about ourselves.

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with that approach. Indeed, done mindfully, it may be the place where any one of us begins. But we’re not meant to stop there. As we go deeper, the practice of blessing brings us to other things.

For to bless another is to know our own blessedness, our own worth. And to know our own worth is to know that we are part of a larger wholeness. And to know ourselves as part of a larger wholeness is to know that many of our brothers and sisters in this human enterprise are suffering, as are many other species of animals and plants on this earth. And it is to know that in many ways, it is our normal, American competition-and-consumption lifestyle that perpetuates this suffering.

And thus, knowing ourselves as part of a larger wholeness also means knowing that we are “part of an ongoing venture, responsible to generations past and to generations yet to come for building a world of mercy and hope, justice and peace.” (David Bumbaugh) Indeed, in contemporary Judaism, the building of this world is considered tikkun olam; through acts of service and especially social justice, the sparks of the holy are released – and wholeness begins to return. (Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun organization is important in this – www.tikkun.org)

As the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry, (the UU seminary I attended) once wrote:

Your gifts -- whatever you discover them to be --
Can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind's power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
The gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing,
(the gift of) Waiting

Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
Bind up wounds,
Welcome the stranger,
Praise what is sacred,
Do the work of justice
Or offer love.

Any of these can draw down the prison door,
Hoard bread,
Abandon the poor,
Obscure what is holy,
Comply with injustice
Or withhold love.

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world. …

Every day, every moment, in even the small things, we can choose to bless the world. And gradually – or perhaps more quickly than we think possible – we will find ourselves building that world of mercy, hope, justice and peace, piece by piece, blessing by blessing.

How do we do this? A small example. Some years ago, I officiated at the wedding of a young couple in Washington who came from wealthy families. They were quite privileged. They were not members of my congregation, but we came to know one another and enjoy each other as we worked on their ceremony together. But when the day of the ceremony came, I was shocked to find them treating me as though I were a mere functionary – not someone with whom they had a relationship of significance. Now, of course, weddings are stressful – we all know that. But I couldn’t help but walk away feeling hurt and stung after marrying the; I couldn’t help thinking to myself what jerks they were!

But as I reached my car, I stopped, and looked at the beauty of the world around me. I did not want to curse this young couple. I wanted to be able to bless them.

And so, aloud, standing next to my car and looking at the beautiful sky, I quietly made up a blessing. Aloud, but to myself, thinking as fondly of them as possible, I said, “May your married life be full of sweetness, with just enough sourness to make for good growth.

May the coming gifts of age and experience temper your arrogance.

In your prosperity, may there be a wealth of opportunities to give.

And may you find joy in using your lives and your powers to serve a greater good.” And then I got into my car and drove away.

Now in telling you this I don’t mean to imply that choosing to bless the world means we simply put a positive spin on everything. Because sometimes this is not possible for us – sometimes we are so deeply in despair or confusion that the choice to bless eludes us. In these times, our work is first to heal ourselves.

But in choosing to bless the world, it helps that we have this religious community with which we can practice blessing – both the simple verbal kind which is a goad to mindfulness of our own power, and the kind is our hands, hearts and lives in action to challenge our fears and complacency.

Let us close with a story. When she was a child of four, Rachel Naomi Remen’s grandfather brought her a small paper cup as a gift. Expecting something special, she looked inside, and saw that it was full of dirt, with which she was forbidden to play. She was disappointed, and told her grandfather this. In return, he smiled, and filled her small doll’s teapot full of water. “If you promise to put some water in the cup every day, something may happen,” he said.

She did not understand, of course, but she was curious, and so she did her best to remember every day to put a little water in the small cup. But as the days went by and nothing changed, the remembering became harder and harder. She tried to give the cup back to her grandfather, but he refused to take it, saying simply, “Every day.” And so the days went by. And then, one morning, when Rachel looked in the cup, there were two little green leaves which had not been there the night before.

She was astonished, and could not wait for her grandfather’s next visit so she could show him. She was sure he, too, would be amazed. But of course he was not. Carefully he explained to her that life is everywhere, hidden in the most ordinary and unlikely places. “And all it needs is water, Grandpa?” she asked. Gently, he touched her head and said, “No, (my dear, not water). All it needs is your faithfulness.” (Story adapted slightly from “My Grandfather’s Blessings”)

This is the power of blessing. If we are faithful to it, if we remember to bless the life around us and within us, to serve the greater good with our minds and hearts and hands, the miracles of life will reveal themselves and we can help restore the wholeness of the world.

Amen.