Bless Yourself for a Blessed Life begins with a dedication to my daughter who remains my number one teacher.
Following that is my best friend, her mother. Their input and support is invaluable.
My dedication goes to Mary Meighan for her sharing the wisdom of blessing she received from her Celtic ancestors. And to SaraThorsen who introduced us.
Bless yourself for a blessed life first began with a suggestion about 12 years ago that I write blessings on a daily basis. I started with blessing others. I generated them based on the older idea that you can bless me and I can bless you but God forbid I should bless myself. After writing about 1200 blessings, I arrived at a different understanding. The same forces of a blessing apply anywhere and anytime.
From wherever the blessing comes from, the positive feeling-energies it contains is experienced internally no matter what. These blessed feeling-energies are what I always wanted to be richest in and just did not know it. I do not believe they all knew it, but blessing myself turned into what my family, friends, spiritual teachers and success coaches have ever wanted for me.
I can read a blessing from any of the world religions, from poetry, from song or whatever. With every blessing I realize that the words they contain hold incredible powers to create change in my life. Those blessings are all about blessing me. With the ones I generate I have learned how to bless myself in an even more rewarding way.
You might have read about my secret powers of self-reflection. But if you want to know more about me, here is another piece.
I spent my childhood in a magical time known as the 50’s and 60’s. I lived in a magical place called Stevehaven. One of the finest abodes in my hometown I lived surrounded by family, lots of dogs and horses and a serious penchant for going to church.
That I call it a magical time and place should tell you something about me already. Among the privileges I ‘survived’ were riding my horse on fox hunts (Tallyho!) and Sunday sliced roast beef lunches at the club after church. And if you have not figured it out already, we were white.
It suddenly ended one day with the death of my father. Without him I soon drifted into my own reality. Along the way I got into and absorbed a variety of life styles and outlooks, testing each one for how well it filled the holes in me.
I have a long list of the hats I have worn. They include school teacher, psychotherapist, peace walker and warehouseman. My claims to fame? I am not famous. I have walked across 14 countries for world peace. I have had a couple of papers published in professional psychology journals. In another setting, me and another guy in one afternoon, loaded a tractor trailer with 35,000 pounds of grass seed. I could go on. As I said, many hats!
I am a mystic at heart. The big questions of our existence hold me in their thrall, and I am certain they always will. But fatherhood has brought me a level of satisfaction than none of these other life events can come close to.
This very life-changing journey began for me about 12 years ago in a small workshop. Our workshop leader came to us from the verdant mountains of Ireland. Her background in Catholicism and reliance on her mother’s oral training in the Celtic way made for an incredible gift to us. She came to give us a glimpse of the landscapes of Celtic spirituality.
When our presenter spoke of the ancient practice of blessing each other is where this book really began. To her I’m most grateful for what you are now reading.
To give us a taste of what a blessing can do to a person we did a small group exercise in which we each wrote out 4 blessings. For me to write 4 whole blessings, even by such a kind invitation came to me like something from another planet. After some doubt and much thought, I made my first attempt at a blessing. I squeezed out a hope that my daughter would do well in her high school acting class. With that hope/wish came my first juicy and sweet ah-hah about blessing.
