Blessings: a Poetry Workshop “When we bless, we work from a place of inner vision, clearer than our hearts, brighter than our minds… When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source.” —from John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us Poetry is rooted in blessing. Poetry enables the power of mindfulness, and its composition renders abstract thoughts actual, in the form of language. And yet language can only say so much! Still, the effort of putting feeling into words involves this "inner vision," and we often surprise ourselves by what we begin to see. In this workshop, I'll ask participants to meditate for a moment on the meaning of all this — mindfulness, presence, "inner vision." I'll pass around copies of a few examples of different blessing-style poems (some funny, some grievous, all beautiful; excerpts from Christopher Smart's hilarious / heartbreaking "Jubilate Agno" for sure), and we can read through a couple of them and have a short open discussion. This will help set our hearts and minds aglow. Then, together, we'll try a couple of different writing exercises. With blessings as our mode of concentration, we'll spend a few minutes (individually) writing lines that begin: "May you..." Workshop participants will write as many lines as they like. When a few minutes are up, I'll ask that we review what we've written and select some of the lines of our own work that we like the best. Then, taking turns, we'll go around in a circle and speak our blessings, one by one. I'll transcribe what everyone has to say, making a kind of group poem out of these blessings. Then I'll read the group poem back to everyone, and we'll reflect on its many dimensions. Then we'll try writing again for a few minutes, this time concentrating on a single blessing and elaborating upon it in the form of a longer poem. We can set an arbitrary goal, say, ten lines or more, and just take some time to write. (Writing as meditation! Writing as healing!) I'll ask the group if anyone would like to share their short blessing poem. We can return to our group poem and read it aloud one more time, or close with another great blessing example. I'll invite everyone to make a physical gesture of blessing — as simple as turning one's head to the sky, or waving hello to a tree, and that's how we'll conclude.