The Blessing of Story

The Blessing of Story


"If poet's verses be but stories,
So are food and raiment stories:
So is all the world a story:
So is man of dust a story."
   ___ Amra Columcille, early Irish text



  There are many traditional Celtic texts and stories that have their blessing upon the reciter or listener. At the end of the Irish story called 'The Fosterage in the House of Two Pails," the reciter blesses the people about to embark on a long voyage with safety, those about to be wed with fertility, those about to open an ale-house with peaceful business, and kings who are threatened by destruction with a peaceful reign; it further promises to bless prisoners with freedom!
   Here we see the therapeutic blessing of story as a healing agent to certain conditions of life. The receipt of story by eyes or ears was regarded as a vital pathway of blessing, if the reader or listener were in a state of proper attention and respect. Those who merely siphoned the words off the page like a vacuum cleaner, those who sat inattentively, mentally wool-gathering, did not receive the blessing. Our own saturation with printed materials sometimes renders us insensible to the sacred blessing of story and its many gifts. That blessing flows past our eyes and ears without impact.
   But when we memorize a story, its blessing works at a deeper level within us. It is then that we enter fully into its workings; it is then that we become the story. When we become garments of story, we are able to clothe others with blessing.

What is the story to which you turn again and agin for nurture?  What kind of blessing do you derive from it? How is that story akin to your own life? Write a blessing that seems to derive from this story for other readers or listeners to benefit from."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]