Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

February 24, 2008

“Blessing Hands Around the World”

Rev. Kathy Duhon

REFLECTED UPON READINGS

            I want to share with you two pieces of writing from Unitarian Universalist ministers that encompass the topic today.   In the first, Kaaren Anderson reflects on a picture of a football player’s hands, and how they tell a story about what he does, the hurts he’ll have to soothe, and the gentleness too.  She gazed at her own hands and thought how they already looked like her grandmother’s, and how they touch and experience and create.  Kaaren wrote about a colleague who witnesses many deaths and has a blessing ritual that she does, helping wash the body.  “She washes the face as a symbol of what that person has seen, the hands as a symbol of what that person has done, and the feet as a symbol of where that person has been.” 

            Kaaren writes, “I love that symbolism.  Unlike the lineman who can look at his hands and see what he does, most of us can forget what it is we do, and who we are connected to.  But it’s all there, in our hands.  Those we touch or greet in welcome and friendship, of creation made possible through writing or painting or playing, of conversations retold, of tears shed in cradled hands.”

            “The Shakers have a saying, ‘Hands to work, and Hearts to God.’  They believe that your life’s calling – your work – should be no less than an act of joy.  An act of work is an act of worship.”

            “I stare at my hands and whisper, Amen.”

            Another colleague, Barbara Pescan, has written this piece called “Blessing”.

We spend so much time running from ourselves

fleeing from what we know

about the goodness in our hearts

we think we can escape

the intelligence of our loving.

Imagine

you are standing before a bodhisattva –

Jesus, Buddha, the first mother

it does not matter what you call the holy one –

he has dust on his shoes

chaff clings to her

the smells of being alive –

Shining from their faces is the beam of

all their questions

the compassion of their living

Can you see yourself through those eyes?

Can we know each other like this?

(We, who no longer believe in messiahs

can hardly believe in each other.)

Can we

know ourselves seen

and know each other this same way

until our restless hearts

learn to abide

in this knowing and this love?

Can we live in this gaze of blessing? 

Blessing Hands Around the World

            Religions differ widely in theology and in temperament, in how they interact with the rest of the world and in their scriptures and spiritual practices, but they do share much in common – an emphasis on peace, love, forgiveness, hope.  There are a couple of special aspects occurring in many religious traditions that I want to lift up today.  One is the use of blessing, which happens all the time, inside and outside of religions.

            God may or may not be invoked, as in the “God bless you” after a sneeze.  In our family, we tend to say instead, “Bless your bones”, something that came from Jon’s grandmother.  Or when a little more pity is called for, “Bless your heart”, from my Mom.  Twice I have received simple “God bless you”s that reside in the sanctuary of my heart – one from Buddhist Stephen Levine who said it to me as I left his workshop.  I was surprised since I don’t think he believes in God, exactly, but in blessing, yes.  On my dresser the other is in a note to me from Mother Theresa, with her hand-written “God bless you.”  There is a common reaching out to pass on blessing, to hope for blessing, to recognize blessing.  Which begs the question, what is this blessing?

            Some might look upon a blessing as a supernatural favor, or something related to a religious rite, but I prefer theologian Joyce Rupp’s definition:  “To bless … is to acknowledge the sacredness that is already there.”  And why do we need blessings if they are already inherent in our experience?  Because we get bogged down in our problems and we have been known to tighten our grasp on this world of stuff and madness and misery, forgetting, neglecting, the awe that surrounds us, always.  To notice a blessing is to respond with a “yes” to the world, with gratitude, with hope, and even with joy.  

            Blessing lives in the heart of poetry, and in the deepest core of our families and communities, and blessing lives wherever hearts are open and free.  A few years before he died, the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats wrote this:

                        I am content to follow to its source

                        Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

                        When such as I cast our remorse

                        So great a sweetness flows into the breast

                        We must laugh and we must sing,

                        We are blest by everything

                        Everything we look upon is blest.

            Yeats finds blessing everywhere, but after he is remorseful and forgives himself.  Blessing is sought after and bestowed to bring us home to ourselves and to our world, opening us to the sweetness that flows everywhere and in everything.

            The other aspect I want to lift up for you that is shared among religions is related to blessing.  This is our use of hands to convey blessing, and to notice in an embodied way that we are holy indeed.  Many hand gestures are used to express our religious traditions.  These visible, tangible, incarnational symbols say to us that religion is not just about what is in our heads, or even what is in our hearts, but religion is also about what resides in our bodies, and can be expressed with our bodies.

            Hands together, palm to palm, in front of the heart, is seen in both Christianity and Buddhism, and in other practices, and seems to represent a centeredness at the heart of it all, in love, or in oneness.  We feel and we see a drawing together and yet a pointing beyond, with our fingers.  Another way of centering the hands comes in the sitting practice of Buddhist meditation, where the feeling is more of a grounded centering of the whole body, a way of noticing in our bodies that we are at one with ourselves and the world.

            There is a symbolic washing or cleansing of hands in some religious rites, a remembrance that there is always some dirt on us, both physical and otherwise.  And this is joined with the reminder that our feeling of impurity, our self-condemnation, is only ever temporary.

            In the famous Sistine Chapel painting of Michelangelo, the hand of humanity, in the person of Adam, reaches upward, and the hand of God, in the image of a powerful old man, reaches downward, and they almost touch, a symbol of both our seeking longingly, and of our feeling of beloved belonging anyway, of being grasped by a greater force. 

            Sometimes we see the devotional raising of hands in the air, a sense of the beyond that is somehow within our grasp.  In sign language, alleluia is shown by hands raised up in the air, and the feeling expressed is joy.  In one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, he sings, “Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…”  Raising up the hands can be a sign of freedom, as well as exuberance.

            In Hinduism, the god Shiva, and the goddess Kali, both have 2 extra hands, at least.  In one version of Kali there are 10 hands!  Shiva and Kali are important and powerful, associated with destruction and death, as well as with creativity and oneness.  And they seem to be cosmic dancers, hands reaching out in rhythm with the universe.  They remind us that all hands hold life and death, curse and blessing, creativity and possibility.

            The hands of Jesus and Mary are often portrayed as reaching out, low down, in a gentle and inviting way, perhaps as the prelude to an embrace, or to call forth a grace-filled opening in the follower’s heart.  

            In some Pagan traditions, a wedding is celebrated with hand-fasting, a clear joining together of the fates and future of the couple, symbolized by the linking of their hands.  Our hands are at the center of our ability to join together with anybody, whether by holding hands, shaking hands, dancing, or embracing.

            I will finish with the blessing words of William Blake,

                        To see a world in a grain of sand

                        And a heaven in a wild flower,

                        Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

                        And eternity in an hour.

            You have the whole world in your hands and what will you do to extend your blessing?   To receive a blessing?  Blessed Be.  Amen.