15 January 04

Coming and Going

There is a Hebrew blessing for everything, just about, and there is certainly one for entering and leaving your house. I’ve seen several translations of this but the one I like best is “blessed are you in your comings and goings.” For a culture that has spent much of its history on the move, at least mythologically, it’s a good blessing, focusing on the present and the inevitable but bringing “home” into it. It’s packed with resonance yet wholesome. Blessed are you in your comings and goings.

I come and go all the time; I’ve lived in four countries. USA-Spain-UK-France-UK-USA. The years I spent in Boston I moved seven or eight times in as many years. You keep your pack light; you get restless; you move on. (Sometimes you are made to move on because of circumstances outside your control, but part of me believes there’s more control available here than I’d like to think.)

I’d like a blessing, instead, for staying put, something I seem to find almost impossible. Blessed are you in your sitting down. Blessed are you in your emptying your head of shopping lists. Blessed are you in your quiet time, in the quiet time you seem to shove aside as though you feared it.

Blessed are you in the fog and the moonlight and the breath you take to enfold them. Blessed are you in your breathing. Blessed are you—in your place.

(Ecotone Wiki joint post on Coming and Going)

Posted by at 07:26 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. That’s a lovely post.

    — Coup de Vent    16. January 2004, 03:39    Link
  2. A wonderful post, Pica. I didn’t know where you were going with it so the request for a staying-put blessing came as a surprise, and it really touched me.

    — beth    16. January 2004, 03:47    Link
  3. I like the word “dwell.” In this context it would remain grammatically ambiguous: “Blessed are you in your dwelling.” Can we KJV it? Blessed art thou in thy dwelling.

    Just my 2 cents. You said it best!

    — Dave    16. January 2004, 06:28    Link
  4. Dave: I like the word “dwell” too. I was thinking to enlarge the notion of “dwelling” to the chosen place of one’s abode, not just the physical house, but “dwell” can do that.

    The Irish language doesn’t strictly have a concept for a noun of occupation, so “I am a teacher” becomes “I am (literally, I stand) in my teacherness.” I just love this. I think I want to say “blessed art thou in thy dwellingness.”

    — Pica    16. January 2004, 07:29    Link
  5. This lovely post echoes Psalm 121 which is one of my favourites. “May the Lord preserve your coming in and your going out” , Pica.

    — Jenny    16. January 2004, 11:29    Link
  6. this was a wonderfully woven post. I’ve only recently (today) discovered ecotone, and look forward to exploring the many themed writings there.

    your post was so artfully simple … and I do wish you blessings in your staying put. Within your soul, your dwelling, your quiet time.

    — ntexas99    17. January 2004, 15:46    Link
  7. What a lovely piece, dense like a poem, and just as difficult to paraphrase. Lovely is perhaps not the right word here. A deceptively simple piece that crosses far and wide not only place but also time…. Thanks for this post, Pica.

    — maria    18. January 2004, 15:30    Link
  8. Having recently realized that a place has claimed me and I am staying put in it made your post all the sweeter. I feel blessed.

    — Beth W.    19. January 2004, 03:10    Link

  9. Even more than such a lovely blessing, this powerful verse from Psalm 121 is a promise from God to guard our heart from things that may try to seperate us from Him. Contextually, it relates to Psalm 104:23 as we go out in the morning to labor and come home in the evening to rest. Scripture has deep roots of faith and truth and is worth exploring as a whole to help expose it realities! :)


    — TLG    24. July 2007, 17:01    Link

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