“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

Parenting

"Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are." ~ Isabel Allende ♥

A Blessing

"We may not recognize a blessing when it is given, or we may have ideas about life that keep us from experiencing what we already have.   Sometimes we become frozen in the past or unaware of the potential of the present.   We may even come to feel entitled to what has been given by grace.  Or we become so caught up in what is missing in the world that we allow our hearts to break.   There are many ways to feel empty in the midst of our blessings."   Rachel Naomi Remen

A Blessing

"A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship in which both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Recognition

"We are often fooled by someone's appearance, their age or illness or anger, or meanness or just too busy to recognize that there is in everyone a place of goodness and integrity, no matter how deeply buried.   We are too hurried or distracted to stop and bear witness to it.   When we recognize the spark of God in others, we blow on it, no matter how deeply it has been buried or for how long.   When we bless someone, we touch the unborn goodness in them and wish it well."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Prayer and Blessing

"Prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another."  Rachel Naomi Remen