Practicing Benediction
Origins
Practicing Benediction originated as a way of marking the 20th anniversary of my installation at Trinity Lutheran Church in San Pedro, CA. We arrived at the end of the week, moved into the Alpha House, and I was installed on Sunday, October 31, 2005. For 20 years, I’ve been practicing benediction with these people in this place.
A few months ago, when seeking ideas on how to mark this moment, Mandy Smith suggested that I write or compile 20 benedictions for this precious flock. We are in season two of Low in the Water, the podcast from the Eugene Peterson Center, and our episodes always end in a benediction. Those benedictions always seem to land, like words that hit, or fit. I asked a few friends to add some benedictions to my own, and ended up with 25 of them. Here is a list of them:
Benedictions for the Hours
A Benediction for Waking
A Benediction for Working
A Benediction for Noon
A Benediction for the Day’s End
A Benediction for Sleepless Nights
Benedictions for the Days
A Benediction for Sunday Winn Collier
A Benediction for Monday Eric Peterson
A Benediction for Tuesday Brian Keepers
A Benediction for Wednesday Jonathan Gabhart
A Benediction for Thursday Andrea Taphorn
A Benediction for Friday Dave Wollan
A Benediction for Saturday Mandy Smith
Benedictions for Life
A Benediction for Enemies
A Benediction for Friends
A Benediction for Travellers Herb Hoff
A Benediction for the Aching
A Benediction for the Anxious
A Benediction for the Unsure Luthor Nelson
A Benediction for the Prayerless
A Benediction for the Depressed Joe Johnson
A Benediction for What is Immovable
A Benediction for Times of Attack
A Benediction for Times of Conflict
A Benediction for Reconciliation
Benediction for Trinity
I want to use this space to slowly release them. One-by-one. Maybe with audio as well, as they are meant to be shared: spoken and heard. It will also be a space where new benedictions are added, and maybe others could join in on practicing benediction.
The booklet I wrote or compiled is entitled: Practicing Benediction. I asked for brown paper bag donations from the folks at Trinity, cut them to size to be used as the cover for this booklet. I had just been in Wilmore, KY with my friend Winfield Bevins, and saw the most beautiful linocuts that he had done of various saints, so (literally) I tried my own hand at a linocut to print on each cover. Here was the process:
This practicing benediction site will be free, as benedictions should be. But, if you would like to support this site and become a paid subscriber, I will be glad to send you a copy of Practicing Benediction, with the same print on the cover. I can’t promise that it will be on a recycled brown-paper bag.