It is my conviction that humans are a hungry lot starving not merely for attention but for blessing. I have written elsewhere (e.g. here), that to know oneself as blessed (as distinct from fortunate as the beatitudes of Jesus make clear) and to know one’s capacity to be a bearer of divine blessing and to bless, enriches both the blesser and the blessed and joins them in an ineffably holy communion.

This is a story that I first heard while on a retreat led by John Philip Newell – minister, peacemaker, lover of the earth, scholar of Celtic spirituality, and the former warden of Iona Abbey. It is a story about Newell’s father, who also was a minister. John Philip writes:

In the last months of my father’s life, as dementia was rapaciously taking his memory and mind from us, I witnessed the river of feeling flowing strong in him. In fact, it was flowing more uninhibitedly than ever before. Throughout my father’s life, one of his favorite blessings was the prayer attributed to Aaron in the Hebrew Scriptures, sometimes called the Priestly Blessing. It begins with the words, “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine on you” (Numbers 6:24-25). In my father’s flow of feeling now, he wanted to give this blessing to everyone, everywhere, repeatedly.

During my last visit to Canada before he entered a nursing home, my sister asked if I would help sell the family car, which my father was still trying to drive, illegally. I called the local car salesman and set up an appointment for the next day. I made a point of saying to him, “When you meet my father tomorrow you will notice that he seems confused about all sorts of things. But please honor him by speaking to him, not me. This is his car. And I’ll be there with him.”

The young salesman totally got the point. There was playful banter and repartee. My father never lost his sense of humor. There were, of course, absurd moments in the conversation, as there always are when you are dealing with dementia. My father tried to say to him, “Now how much money do I owe you for this car?” The salesman replied, “No, no, Dr. Newell. We want to give you money for the car.” To which my father said, looking at me, “This is very generous of them.”

At the end of the transaction, as the check was being handed over to my father, I said to the young salesman, “Whenever I part from my father or whenever we finish a telephone conversation, he gives me a blessing. And I think he would like to bless you now.” So there we were standing in the middle of a car showroom. My father took the salesman’s hand, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.”

I stood gazing at my father, thinking, if only I could be such a bearer of blessing in the world. And then I looked at the young car salesman. Tears were streaming down his face. He will never forget that moment. Never. Do we know that we carry within us for one another the blessing of God? Do we know that the springs of compassion deep within us can flow again?

~ John Philip Newell from The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings.