BLOG
The Blessing Bowl
January 8, 2007
Looking back, I am amazed at all the wonderful things that have happened in my life this past year. Two events were very significant: my ministerial ordination and the opening of my spiritual counseling practice.
Joanne Franchina
During this exciting time, I adopted as my mantra a quote I heard from my good friend and colleague, Rose Vanden Eynden: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” How appropriate that she and I ultimately became office partners! And how wonderful it felt to finish the year together at our holiday open house.
The open house was great fun. What a delightful crowd — the line for one-minute messages extended far down the hallway! I am especially grateful for the blessings that many of you wrote for our blessing bowl. Both Rose and I held ceremonies to release the blessings; my ceremony took place the night of the first full moon of the year, on January 3.
It was a gorgeous night. I made a small fire and invoked Spirit by calling on the four directions. As I released each blessing into the fire, I said a special blessing for the person who wrote it. Then I said my personal intentions for 2007, and gave thanks for the abundance of blessings I received in 2006. I felt inspired to sing a song that I had learned in seminary, and then to repeat the song over and over, so it became a kind of chanting meditation:
We are the flow and we are the ebb,We are the weavers, we are the web.
There came a moment when I felt I should finish the song and end the ceremony, but then the thought came to me, One more verse. So I sang another verse. And in the middle of that final verse, a hawk (or was it an owl?) flew across the yard, swooped down directly in front of me, and came to rest in a tree at the edge of the property. And with that very special blessing, the ceremony was complete.