Grateful Blessing

June 28, 2026

Image: Gesture of GraceImage: Gesture of Grace
© Jan Richardson

At this time of year, I am thinking so much about friends and colleagues who are on the move—who are leaving the communities they have known and entering into new forms of ministry as they begin new appointments, retire, or go on leave or a sabbatical. I wrote a blessing for one of those friends a while back and wanted to share it with you, for this time. If you are in any kind of threshold-y season, or know someone who is, this is for you.

This Day We Say Grateful
A Sending Blessing

It is a strange thing
to be so bound
and so released
all in the same moment,
to feel the heart
open wide
and wider still,
even as it turns
to take its leave.

On this day,
let us say
this is simply the way
love moves
in its ceaseless spiraling,
turning us toward
one another,
then sending us
into what waits for us
with arms open wide to us
in welcome
and in hope.

On this day,
in this place
where you have
poured yourself out,
where you have been
emptied
and filled
and emptied again,
may you be aware
more than ever
of what your heart
has opened to
here,
what it has tended
and welcomed
here,
where it has broken
in love and in grief,
where it has given
and received blessing
in the unfathomable mystery
that moves us,
undoes us,
and remakes us,
finally,
for joy.

This day
may you know
this joy
in full measure.

This day
may you know
this blessing
that gathers you in
and sends you forth
but will not
forget you.

Oh hear us
as this day
we say
grace,
this day
we say
grateful,
this day
we say
blessing,
this day
we release you
into God’s keeping
and hold you
in gladness
and love.

—Jan Richardson
from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Gesture of Grace, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use this blessing without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Ordinary Time, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

Blessing of Hope

June 12, 2026

Image: She Said This Feels Like HopeImage: She Said This Feels Like Hope
© Jan Richardson

Leaving this here for myself today, and also for you, in case you might need it in these days. So many blessings to you, with deep gratitude.

Blessing of Hope

So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:

hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,

hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,

hope that has breath
and a beating heart,

hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,

hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,

hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,

hope that raises us
from the dead—

not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief


P.S. I want to let you know about this online event happening this Saturday (June 13) with In Good Company Foundation. There’s still time to join!

Saturday, June 13, 2026
Holding the Light: A Conversation with Jan Richardson
Online via Zoom, 11 am-1 pm EDT
 
I am so looking forward to this online event offered by In Good Company Foundation (via Zoom) on June 13! This event will invite us to honor the light within each of us and surrounding us, even on the darkest night. I’ll share readings from my new book, How the Stars Get in Your Bones, as we enter into conversation about love, grief, blessings, hope, and bearing the light in a heartbreaking world. We would love for you to join us from wherever you are!

Info & registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/holding-the-light-a-conversation-with-poet-jan-richardson-via-zoom-tickets-1983080983605.

Registration will remain open until the event starts. The event will be recorded so that everyone who registers can have access to it afterward, regardless of whether you’re able to join us that day.

If you have any questions, please contact In Good Company Foundation directly, and they will be glad to help.

_____________________


Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use this blessing without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in blessings, mystery | Leave a Comment »

Pentecost: A Blessing in the Fire

May 22, 2026

Image: What the Fire GivesImage: What the Fire Gives
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Book of Acts, Day of Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost arrives to remind us that ashes do not have the final word, and that fire does not come only to consume. It comes also to bless, to call, to inspire, to give to us what we could never begin to imagine on our own.

—Jan Richardson, from Pentecost: What the Fire Gives
The Painted Prayerbook

_____________________


On Ash Wednesday this year, as Lent began, I wrote about how I don’t want to romanticize the ashes that can come with devastation and destruction. Instead, I want to stay curious about what God can do with ashes and with dust, and to continue to discern the ways I can be part of what God might be creating anew.

I am thinking about this again as we approach the Day of Pentecost. We have traveled through many weeks since the beginning of Lent. This arc of time that began with ashes will end with fire, that vivid image and symbol of the Spirit that comes to Jesus’ followers in the wake of his physical departure. And where fire might rightly conjure images of more devastation and ashes, on this day, it comes instead with Spirit, with new life, with the miracle of speaking and understanding, and with a transforming call.

This day, and throughout the coming season, what word might this fire hold for us? What might we most need to speak, and where might we listen for a word that someone else needs to say?

As Pentecost arrives, this blessing is for you, with deep gratitude.

What the Fire Gives
A Blessing for Pentecost

You had thought that fire
only consumed,
only devoured,
only took for itself,
leaving merely ash
and memory
of something
you had believed,
if not permanent,
would be long enough,
enduring enough,
to be nearly
eternal.

So when you felt
the scorching on your lips,
the searing in your heart,
you could not
at first believe
that flame could be
so generous,
that when it came to you—
you, in your sackcloth
and sorrow—
it did not come
to consume,
to take still more
than everything.

What surprised you most
were not the syllables
that spilled from
your scalded,
astonished mouth—
though that was miracle
enough,
to have words
burn through
what had been numb,
to find your tongue
aflame with a language
you did not know
you knew—

no, what came
as greatest gift
was to be so heard
in the place
of your deepest
silence,
to be so seen
within the blazing,
to be met
with such completeness
by what the fire gives.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image What the Fire Gives, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use this blessing without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in blessings, lectionary, sacred time | 3 Comments »

Ascension Day/Easter 7: Blessing the Distance

May 14, 2026

Image: Ascension IIImage: Ascension II
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Ascension Day (often celebrated the Sunday after): Luke 24:44-53

On this Ascension Day, I am struck all over again by how, in Luke’s account of the Ascension, he tells us that as Jesus is leaving the disciples—and the earthly life (and death, and life) he has known with them—he blesses them. With this last gesture, this final word, Jesus acknowledges that blessing and leaving are deeply bound together, and that love somehow endures within every aching distance that happens in this life.

This is a wondrous and difficult grace.

Jesus is not trying to sugarcoat his leaving. He is not giving his beloved disciples a blessing as a consolation prize for having come through these wild years with him, only to see him go. Instead, with this blessing, Jesus shows that the substance of grief is also the substance of love. They are made of the same stuff. If we can stay with both the grief and the love, the love will become more clear, and more clarifying. In time, it will show us the way to go.

Blessing the Distance

It is a mystery to me
how as the distance
between us grows,
the larger this blessing
becomes,

as if the shape of it
depends on absence,
as if it finds its form
not by what
it can cling to
but by the space
that arcs
between us.

As this blessing
makes its way,
first it will cease
to measure itself
by time.

Then it will release
how attached it has become
to this place
where we have lived,
where we have learned
to know one another
in proximity and
presence.

Next this blessing
will abandon
the patterns
in which it moved,
the habits that helped it
recognize itself,
the familiar pathways
it traced.

Finally this blessing
will touch its fingers
to your brow,
your eyes,
your mouth;
it will hold
your beloved face
in both its hands,

and then
it will let you go;
it will loose you
into your life;
it will leave
each hindering thing

until all that breathes
between us
is blessing
and all that beats
between us
is grace.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons


P.S. I want to let you know about this online event happening this Saturday with Cranaleith Spiritual Center:

Saturday, May 16, 2026
Bearing the Light in Unbearable Times: A Conversation with Jan Richardson 
Online via Zoom, 12-2pm EDT
(In-Person Watch Party available at Cranaleith, Philadelphia)
 
I am so looking forward to this online event offered by Cranaleith Spiritual Center on May 16! As fractures in our society continue to widen, how do we tend what is broken without losing heart? This conversation will explore how we might become bearers of healing light in a broken world, trusting that even in places of deep rupture, light is already at work, not erasing the scars, but shining through them. We would love for you to join us from wherever you are!
 
Info & registration: https://cranaleith.secure.retreat.guru/program/bearing-the-light-in-unbearable-times-a-conversation-with-jan-richardson
 
If you have any questions, please contact Cranaleith Spiritual Center, and they will be glad to help.

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Ascension II, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use this blessing without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in blessings, Easter, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

Easter 5: Blessing with Many Rooms

May 2, 2026

Image: A Place to DwellImage: A Place to Dwell
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 5, Year A: John 14:1-14

For you, beloveds, for the fifth Sunday in this season of resurrection: a blessing that has plenty of space in it, and room enough to welcome us all.

Blessing with Many Rooms

As you step inside
this blessing,
we wish to tell you
it is large enough
for you to lie down in.

Or (though it may not look it,
small as it is upon this page)
you can curl up
in this blessing
with a cup of tea
and a good book
beside the window—
here, just behind you—
that faces east.

Likewise it is true,
though you might not have
paused long enough
to notice,
that this blessing
is big enough
for a table—
quite a sizeable one
can be accommodated—
where your guests
will want to linger
far into the night.

And if they desire to stay,
you will find that
through this door—
you did not see it before?—
there are rooms in plenty
where they can
lay their heads
and stretch out with abandon
in their dreaming sleep.

One room,
many rooms—
in this blessing
it is all the same.

The point is that
there is space
enough:

enough to make
a life, a home;
enough to make
a world;

enough to make
your way toward
the One who has made
this way for you.

—Jan Richardson
from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image A Place to Dwell, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary | 4 Comments »

Easter 4: A Blessing with a Gate in It

April 25, 2026

Image: Blessing of the GateImage: Blessing of the Gate
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 4, Year A: John 10.1-10

I know I am not alone in thinking that life has been very threshold-y of late, in beautiful and challenging ways. So this is for you (and for us), for the fourth Sunday of Easter: a blessing with a gate in it. May we be open to the grace that comes to meet us in every crossing, every passage, every place where we are working to come through.

Blessing of the Gate

Press your hand
to this blessing,
here along
the side
where you can feel
its seam.

Follow the seam
and you will find
the hinges
on which
this blessing turns.

Feel how
your fingers
catch on them—
top,
bottom,
the slightest pressure
sending the gate
gliding open
in a glad welcome.

Wait, did I say
press your hand
to this blessing?

What I meant was
press your hand
to your heart.

Rest it over that
place in your chest
that has grown
closed and tight,
where the rust,
with its talent
for making decay
look artful,
has bitten into
what you once
held dear.

Breathe deep.
Press on the knot
and feel how it
begins to give way,
turning upon
the hinge
of your heart.

Notice how it
opens wide
and wider still
as you exhale,

spilling you out
into a realm
where you never dreamed
to go
but cannot now imagine
living this life
without.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Blessing of the Gate, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary | 2 Comments »

Easter 3: Table Blessing

April 18, 2026

Image: EmmausImage: Emmaus
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 3, Year A: Luke 24:13-35

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
—Luke 24:31

I am thinking about the Emmaus story that comes to us on the third Sunday in this season of resurrection. I am so grateful for how Christ meets us in the breaking of bread, and how, even (and sometimes especially) in our deepest losses, a table can become a holy place that invites us to recognize him in each other. So today, in whatever hope or hurt or hunger you carry, this blessing is for you.

Table Blessing

To your table
you bid us come.
You have set the places;
you have poured the wine;
and there is always room,
you say,
for one more.

And so we come.
From the streets
and from the alleys
we come.

From the deserts
and from the hills
we come.

From the ravages of poverty
and from the palaces of privilege
we come.

Running,
limping,
carried,
we come.

We are bloodied with our wars;
we are wearied with our wounds;
we carry our dead within us,
and we reckon with their ghosts.

We hold the seeds of healing;
we dream of a new creation;
we know the things
that make for peace,
and we struggle
to give them wings.

And yet, to your table
we come.
Hungering for your bread,
we come;
thirsting for your wine,
we come;
singing your song
in every language,
speaking your name
in every tongue,
in conflict and in communion,
in discord and in desire,
we come,
O God of Wisdom,
we come.

—Jan Richardson
from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Emmaus, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of Luke, lectionary | 3 Comments »

Easter Sunday: In the Garden of Resurrection

April 5, 2026

Image: In the Garden of ResurrectionImage: In the Garden of Resurrection
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday, Year A:
John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-10

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Jesus asked Mary Magdalene when he met her outside the tomb where she had expected to find his body. As Easter arrives, I am thinking about emptiness that comes as an astonishing grace and a discombobulating joy, calling us into a world we can barely begin to imagine but that we receive a glimpse of on this day.

On this Easter Sunday, beloved ones, I am sending so many blessings for you.

Seen
A Blessing for Easter Day

You had not imagined
that something so empty
could fill you
to overflowing,

and now you carry
the knowledge
like an awful treasure
or like a child
that roots itself
beneath your heart:

how the emptiness
will bear forth
a new world
that you cannot fathom
but on whose edge
you stand.

So why do you linger?
You have seen,
and so you are
already blessed.
You have been seen,
and so you are
the blessing.

There is no other word
you need.
There is simply
to go
and tell.
There is simply
to begin.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image In the Garden of Resurrection, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, lectionary, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Holy Saturday: To Hold Our Anguish and Hope in the Same Hand

April 4, 2026

Image: The Sixth & Seven Words: It Is Finished/Into Your HandsImage: The Sixth & Seven Words: It Is Finished/Into Your Hands
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday:
Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42

They took the body of Jesus.
—John 19:40

This is the day that calls us to breathe.

This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache.

This is the day that calls us to hold our anguish and our hope in the same hand.

This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another and to remember we do not breathe alone.

In the Breath, Another Breathing
A Blessing for Holy Saturday

Let it be
that on this day
we will expect
no more of ourselves
than to keep
breathing
with the bewildered
cadence
of lungs that will not
give up the ghost.

Let it be
we will expect
little but
the beating of
our heart,
stubborn in
its repeating rhythm
that will not
cease to sound.

Let it be
we will
still ourselves
enough to hear
what may yet
come to echo:
as if in the breath,
another breathing;
as if in the heartbeat,
another heart.

Let it be
we will not
try to fathom
what comes
to meet us
in the stillness
but simply open
to the approach
of a mystery
we hardly dared
to dream.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

_____________________


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image The Sixth & Seven Words: It Is Finished/Into Your Hands, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

 

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Good Friday: Let All Stand Still

April 3, 2026

Image: The CrucifixionImage: The Crucifixion
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Good Friday: John 18:1-19:42

There they crucified him.
—John 18:18

All too quickly the breaking of the bread becomes the breaking of the flesh.

All too soon the cup offered at the table becomes the life poured out at the cross.

After the rending, after the emptying: an impossible stillness, an aching silence, an incomprehensible hollow for which no word will ever be adequate.

On this day that asks us to bear witness to what is breaking, may we not turn away.

Still
A Blessing for Good Friday

This day
let all stand still
in silence,
in sorrow.

Sun and moon
be still.

Earth
be still.

Still
the waters.

Still
the wind.

Let the ground
gape in stunned
lamentation.

Let it weep
as it receives
what it thinks
it will not
give up.

Let it groan
as it gathers
the One
who was thought
forever stilled.

Time
be still.

Watch
and wait.

Still.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

_____________________


Also for Good Friday . . .

Once upon a time, Gary and I created a video that intertwines my Seven Last Words art series with his exquisite song “This Crown of Thorns.” I would love to share it with you. [For my email subscribers: if you don’t see the video below, click here to go to The Painted Prayerbook site, where you can view it in this post.]

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image The Crucifixion, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

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