Canter Bridge

The dialect of blessing accelerates quickly to its full cadence. Because the speaker has only good things in mind, no resistance belabors the tongue. None of life’s ordinary anguish burdens the mind as it spins out what it wishes for the ones upon whom its heart’s desire falls.

Blessing, one gathers, consists of two critical pieces: first, the desire of good only and everywhere for the one whom the blesser loves. And second, the willingness to do all that one can to coax those good wishes towards reality in the life of the blessed.

The formula becomes stretched when one blesses us, that is when I turn my eyes not on some very present other whose eyes meet mine, but when I wish for all things to be good in the life of my people and—inevitably in the logic of the thing—for our people.

The 144th Psalm serves up a moving version:

May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown,
our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace;
may our granaries be full, providing all kinds of produce;
may our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields;
may our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in bearing;
may there be no cry of distress in our streets!
Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall!
Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD! (Psalm 144:12–15 ESV)

The blessing falls upon the boys and girls who will soon be our men and our women, upon the grain of our field, the beasts in our barns, the neighbor whose footsteps fall even now outside my door in darkness’ early hours, the tribe and nation who live under YHWH’s good sun and soaking rain.

If the part stands in for the whole—a short poem is destined to employ such abbreviation—then the poet’s heart overflows with the wish that all things everywhere and at all moments should be good in this people whose lot I share, who gave me this speech and this appearance, and who draw me as though by magnetic force back to the place that is uniquely theirs.

Uniquely ours.

It is possible to take up these words against the other. Possible, but not necessary.

It is not unheard that one’s affection for one’s own people should become lost, its color blanched out by a thousand disappointments and by contempt for what is familiar. Heard, but not incurable.

What would our people’s lot be—for themselves, for ourselves, and for the nation just across the way—if we emerged through each morning’s doorway with words like these murmured contentedly, longingly, upon rested, diligent lips?