Blessings

Video Transcript

Blessing for sound.

I thank you for the smallest sound. For the way my ears open even before my eyes, as if to remember the way everything began with an original, vibrant, note. And I thank you for this everyday original music, always being rehearsed, always being played, always being remembered as something new and arriving. A tram line below in the city street, gull cries, or a ship’s horn in the distant harbour, so that in waking I hear voices, even when there is no voice. So that in waking, I hear voices even where there is no voice, and invitations where there is no invitation, so that I can wake with you by the ocean in summer or in the deepest, seemingly quietest winter and be with you, so that I can hear you, even with my eyes closed, even with my heart closed, even before I fully wake.

Blessing for the light.

I thank you, light, again, for helping me to find the outline of my daughter’s face. I thank you, light, for the subtle way your merest touch gives shape to such things I could only learn to love through your delicate instruction. And I thank you this morning, waking again, most intimately and secretly for your visible invisibility, the way you make me look at the face of the world so that everything becomes an eye to everything else, and so that, strangely, I also see myself being seen, so that I can be born again in that sight, so that I can have this one other way, along with every other way, to know that I am here.