The Painted Prayerbook

The Blessing Cups: Mary Magdalene and Jesus at Tea
© Jan L. Richardson

Hello, dear ones, and thank you for stopping by amidst my long absence from The Painted Prayerbook! What a wild and wondrous stretch of weeks (months) it has been. My sweetheart and I were married just over two weeks ago, on a bright spring day on the beautiful farm that has been in the Richardson family for several generations. It was an amazing day of being surrounded by family and friends who have shared this journey with us.

As Gary and I planned the celebration, the word that kept coming to mind was blessing. We wanted this to be a time of gathering up the folks who have been such blessings to us; to offer thanks; and for the day to be a blessing to them in turn. Toward that end, we invited a number of friends and family to offer blessings during our ceremony and reception. The words they offered—words of blessing for the community as well as for Gary and me—will linger with me for a long, long time.

I wanted to offer a blessing of my own for that day—to find some words to wrap around the extraordinary moment that Gary and I had been journeying toward for so long. Somehow, amidst the intensities of preparing for the wedding, some words showed up just in time, and I included them on the back of our printed wedding program. I offer them to you in gratitude for the ways that you bless me by sharing this path.

Here: A Blessing

Some other day, perhaps,
I could draw you a map of this place:
could show you the stand of trees
that has always seemed to me
haunted by those
whose arrowheads still surface
now and again by the lake;
could show you the spot
where eagles keep their nest;
the silo
where my grandfather and his siblings
carved their names
into the new concrete;
the place where I stood
the night the old depot burned.

But I think today is a day
for remembering
how all our history
comes down to our hands,
how we carry the lines
that our ancestors
pressed into our palms:
a geography of the generations
inscribed upon us like a map.

And so let it be
that before we leave
this place
this day
we lay our hands—
the cartography
ever etched into our skin—
upon this ancient terrain
in gratitude and praise

and then, rising,
turn them skyward:
a blessing
a benediction
a prayer
that the wind will carry
far and far
from here.

In these spring days (and in these autumn days, for my friends in the southern hemisphere), where are you finding blessings? How are you offering them in turn?

On another note, I want to let you know that as I move into our new house, I have a few pieces of art that I’m feeling ready to send on their way. These are pieces that have had a special place in my space and my life, but as Gary and I make a new home together, it feels like time for them to find a new home of their own. Perhaps yours? I have a few of the pieces remaining from the series The Hours of Mary Magdalene, along with The Lenten Series (created for Peter Storey’s book Listening at Golgotha), and am offering them at a reduced price for a limited time. Through June 15, pieces from the Magdalene series are available individually for $900 (originally $1200), and the entire Lenten series is available for $2400 (originally $3000). To view the Magdalene series, I invite you to visit The Hours of Mary Magdalene and click on the individual images to see what’s available. You can visit the Lenten pieces by clicking The Lenten Series. Thanks for giving thought to whether any of these images might be inviting you to take them home. If so, I welcome you to contact me by leaving a comment here (I won’t publish any comments related to an art purchase) or emailing me via my website at janrichardson.com. And know that art prints of these and other images are always available at that site and at janrichardsonimages.com.

Much gratitude and many blessings to you in these May days!

This entry was posted on May 10, 2010 at 9:25 PM and is filed under art, poetry, sacred time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.