Blessings

From Rachel Remen’s My Grandfather’s Blessings, the phrase that grabbed my attention today is a simple one – “The web of blessings.”  Sure, there are things in life that suck, and “suck” is not an adequate word for some things experienced enough in life.  Still, if I step outside from my pity party for a breath of fresh air I can see that I am and have been sustained through life by an intricate “web of blessings,” held up firmly much like a rope hammock holds one up off the ground.

Well beyond the basics in Maslow’s hierarchy, I am blessed, sustained, enriched by good friends, a timely smile, an encouraging spoken or read word, a fond memory, a warm meal, a good story, a timely laugh….  Most of all, I am blessed by others, some I know well, others that I connect with only briefly, perhaps only for one short moment in a long life.  As Remen puts it, “real teachers are everywhere.  The life in us will be blessed by others over and over again until finally we have remembered how to bless it ourselves.”

It occurs to me in all this that the more I come to trust that the sufficiency of that “web of blessings” and their ability to sustain me, the closer I come to being who/what God intended for me to be – the more I become a blessing to myself, and to others.