Shabbat Shalom ~ Vayelech 2022

Dear WJC Family,

I know I said no message this week, but in my Rosh Hashanah sermon, I did promise a list of unusual blessings you can try to find an opportunity to say at least once during these 100 Days of Blessings. Here is passage to help keep us inspired to bless, from a Jewish spiritual master and blessing maven, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner:

Blessings give reverent and routine voice to our conviction that life is good, one blessing after another. Even, and especially, when life is cold and dark. Indeed to offer blessings at such times may be our only deliverance.
We have specific and unique phrases by which we bless a sacred book before we read it, our children at the Sabbath table, our hands while washing them, the bread we eat, the moon, the fact that we are not slaves, and that the rooster can distinguish between night and day. We bless dwarfs and trees in first blossom. We bless the hearing of good news and any kind of wine. We bless everything. Or, to be technically correct, we bless the Holy One who stands behind and within them all.
Blessings keep our awareness of life’s holy potential ever present. They awaken us to our own lives. Every blessing says, “I am grateful to be a creature and to remind myself and God that life is good.”
With each blessing uttered we extend the boundaries of the sacred and ritualize our love of life. One hundred times a day. Everywhere we turn, everything we touch, everyone we see. The blessing can be whispered. No one even needs to hear. No one but the Holy One. “Holy One of Blessing, your Presence fills the universe. Your presence fills me.”
—Eyes Remade for Wonder: A Lawrence Kushner Reader, page 6

Recite a blessing and submit it, to remind us all that we are a blessing community. We can’t wait to see them!

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Shabbat Shalom,
RJA

SUBMIT YOUR BLESSING