{"id":183,"date":"2022-11-04T08:41:17","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/?p=183"},"modified":"2022-11-04T08:41:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:41:17","slug":"fists-full-of-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/04\/fists-full-of-blessings\/","title":{"rendered":"Fists full of Blessings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week in my Spirit Play class, one of the children was working with the Celebration of\u00a0New Lives story.<\/p>\n

Blessed by Earth and Water<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This has been a popular story to work with in our class. \u00a0The baby dolls in the story have been amply blessed with water and dirt\u00a0making some fantastically\u00a0muddy babies. \u00a0The blessing by beauty takes place with a rose that is gently stroked down the baby\u2019s cheek in our church\u2019s ritual. \u00a0We have enough artificial flowers for all the children in our room and I observed this child as she held big bunches of those flowers gripped in each hand and vigorously blessed the doll she was working with. \u00a0She blessed the doll so enthusiastically she literally swept it across the floor with her flower bunches. \u00a0It rolled over and over being tumbled and swept away by beauty.<\/p>\n

I wondered about this encounter with beauty. \u00a0Are there ever times when I am that moved by something beautiful? \u00a0Would an encounter like that be profoundly disorienting? \u00a0Would I want to encounter a blessing like that? \u00a0I have also lately been thinking about where in my own journey I am a little too serious and could use a little humor. \u00a0Well placed humor can completely change the energy of a tense or sad situation sometimes allowing us to move through those emotions with a little more ease. \u00a0So I wondered again what this kind of encounter with beauty might look and feel like. \u00a0I remember as a child being in the bright sun and rolling down grassy hills. \u00a0The feeling of spinning and rolling and getting faster until I either rolled to the bottom or flung my arms out wide to stop myself. \u00a0I remember laughing and being dizzy and enjoying that feeling of, well, of disorientation I suppose. \u00a0Not something I tend to enjoy as an adult. \u00a0But I imagined that if I was the baby being swept by flowers, that the flowers may even tickle and it might be a great delight to be surrounded by the scent and softness of petals. \u00a0I might find it enjoyable to be rolled along. \u00a0I might laugh.<\/p>\n

I thought about the blessings of that moment in class. \u00a0I am grateful to have had the presence to observe this play without getting distracted by the mess of the earth and water blessing. \u00a0I am glad I did not try\u00a0to shut down the active blessing with the flowers. \u00a0I could simply delight in the moment and ponder it. \u00a0That\u2019s spiritual growth for me! \u00a0I also thought\u00a0about those astounding blessings we receive in our lives like close friends, the kindness of another when we feel alone, the gift of self acceptance and compassion; some are so generous and profound that we hardly have words to articulate our gratitude or their importance to us. \u00a0In that profound and ordinary moments where words can fail, maybe laughter is the only adequate response to our blessings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week in my Spirit Play class, one of the children was working with the Celebration of\u00a0New Lives story.<\/p>\n

Blessed by Earth and Water<\/p>\n

This has been a popular story to work with in our class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}