Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk of the Benedictine Order, is known for his pioneering work in interfaith dialogue and his ground-breaking leadership popularizing the spiritual practice of gratefulness.
Br. David has dedicated this little book to “All things, plants, animals, humans, and angels that made me blessed and able to bless.” With the same mixture of devotion, wonder, and imagination he brought to Words of Common Sense for Mind, Body, and Soul, his book on proverbs, the author presents 99 Blessings that he wrote during a three-month period.
In ancient times, people would regularly bless each other, their labours, their homes, their land, and their animals. Nowadays, this spiritual practice is often limited to religious services and ceremonies, the occasional “bless you” when someone sneezes in public, or the response of a homeless person after receiving a gift of money. Br. David brings these prayers back where they belong — into the midst of everyday life as an integral part of fresh linen, using the Internet, taking leave, listening to music, learning by heart, being taught by spiders, daydreaming in bed, smelling leather, and much more.
All blessings emanate from a deep and holy place within us, and Br. David helps us see that we too can deepen and enrich our daily activities and routines with these improvised prayers. See the excerpt for a few examples of blessings from the book. Here’s a blessing from the book’s preface:
“May this patchwork quilt of blessings help to sharpen your taste for the gift of life in its innumerable facets. May you grow ever more blessed, ever more able to bless.”
An Excerpt from 99 Blessings: An Invitation by David-Steindl-Rast
Brother David-Steindl-Rast models for us ways to deepen and enrich our everyday spirituality with blessings. Here are two blessings reflecting gratitude.
Source of All Blessings, you bless us with views from train windows — landscape that rotates one way near the tracks and the opposite way near the horizon, while we sit back and watch it rolling by like a film, yet real and with a life of its own. May I always live keenly aware of worlds unaware of being observed, worlds turning and touching, separate from each other, yet one.
Source of All Blessings, you bless us with glass — its many kinds and shapes and colors, the glass of windowpanes, lightbulbs, wine goblets, the nose cones of missiles, the marbles and beach glass that were our grade-school treasures, the lenses of telescopes, the beads that have spent centuries in tombs, the tear bottles buried by grieving women, glass that won’t ever decay yet shatters at once. May it teach me to handle all things with care.
David Steindl-Rast
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ISBN: 9780385347945