Blessing of the Well

Happy March, beloved, and welcome to the Lenten Season!

In the blessing below, poet and pastor Jan Richardson reminds each of us that God offers space to rest, a well of love from which we all can draw hope and healing. Are we brave enough to sit in the quiet, to rest in the uncertainty, to draw close to God and one another? It can be so hard to know the depths that await us, to hold space for the unknowing and the knowing, to trust that we are loved wholly and completely. And yet, it is one of the most important things we can do.

May we do what this blessing of the well calls us to do: draw close, listen well, make space, hold out hope.

Blessing of the Well

If you stand
at the edge
of this blessing
and call down
into it,
you will hear
your words
return to you.

If you lean in
and listen close,
you will hear
this blessing
give the story
of your life
back to you.

Quiet your voice.
Quiet your judgment.
Quiet the way
you always tell
your story
to yourself.

Quiet all these
and you will hear
the whole of it
and the hollows of it:
the spaces
in the telling,
the gaps
where you hesitate
to go.

Sit at the rim
of this blessing.
Press your ear
to its lip,
its sides,
its curves
that were carved out
long ago
by those whose thirst
drove them deep,
those who dug
into the layers
with only their hands
and hope.

Rest yourself
beside this blessing
and you will
begin to hear
the sound of water
entering the gaps.

Still yourself
and you will feel it
rising up within you,
filling every emptiness,
springing forth
anew.

—Jan Richardson