A Book of Everyday Blessings

This is a beautiful book from cover, to each page, to an amazing conclusion with three practices empowering us to be a blessing to others and write our own blessings. These are "everyday blessings"; none are ordinary. Each expression calls for reflection and taking time to savor. I was especially taken with "For my Inner Child," and "For Using Technology Well." Divided into timely and timeless sections, there are blessings for seasons and thresholds, health, and connecting to the holy wild. I want to share these with everyone, and turn to them often.

This book is a treasure chest filled with hope, inspiration, comfort, challenge and solidarity. As I made the journey through these blessings I was struck by their range and depth and colour, Christine paints pictures that shimmer into life through her words. There are blessings for daily life and all it’s shades, for quiet moments, for a spark of joy in a bad day, for deeper gratitude, for calm in the chaos, praise and lament, the death of an animal, for the Earth our sanctuary, for a walk through the seasons and, in all these and more, I felt wrapped in the arms of a Love that would not let me go and, refreshed and replenished, urged to bless others with that Love.

The remarkable capacity of Christine Valters Paintner to awaken us to the sacred presence and provision always available to us within daily living makes this book’s one hundred blessings a ‘must-read’ resource. The title of each blessing makes it easy to select the particular one, or more, able to help us navigate specific circumstances. Whether we need refreshment, encouragement, guidance, or wise counsel for moments mundane or momentous, each blessing/ prayer, organized around seven themes, has layered offerings able to align us with what we need, when we need it.

The book’s penultimate blessing, To Keep Hope Alive, one of my favourites, contains the wise reminder “that hope is not a thing/ but an action.” This prompt to enact and embody hope in specific ways makes this blessing’s sustenance one to repeatedly return to. Its practical wisdom serves as but one example of what makes this whole collection of blessings a long-lasting gift, worthy of consistent revisiting.

When we awaken to the many little graces that gift our days, our capacity for gratitude expands. By acknowledging each day’s unexpected grace-gifts, we become more alert witnesses to the sacredness that permeates the everyday life of ourselves, and others.

Paintner offers us three practices to round out this book. The second one encourages us to Practice Being A Blessing To The World. The details of this and the other two practices offer us ways for passing on the blessings we’ve received. This is a fitting…