About Poetry
as Blessing…
One of the greatest sacred uses of poetry is to bless.
Poetry can be a very real vessel to carry the sacred waters of the soul to other human beings for refreshment, healing and awakening. When something in life calls for our deepest response, when we want to witness and commemorate some pivotal event or life passage such as a marriage, birth of a child, death, or divorce, we need blessing poems. Yet so often in our time we seek but do not find what we need, for our culture has forgotten the true power and purpose of poetry, and that it belongs and must belong to everyone.
These blessing poems are some of the most sincere, heartfelt and intimate poems I have written, because they are written not to be artful or clever but to simply and directly speak to another, to have a certain emotiona ⁄ spiritual effect. They are poems that bear witness, reconcile, heal, or point the way into the future.
For me, writing a poem of blessing is a very sacred responsibility. It is an opportunity to enter into the mythic and archetypal realm that is always present in our everyday lives and journeys, the “world behind the world.”
I must enter into my own heart and to find those other multitudes of beings who are also myself. How deeply can I feel with another?
Can I make that feeling universal and recognizable, make it strike a chord of the eternal?
If anything, a poem of blessing should help us to remember our deepest longings and to “see” and feel the depths of things we had forgotten. We wake up and remember that the soul exists, and there is so much more mystery and beauty within our experience than what we generally recognize.
Please enjoy these few sample blessing poems from a collection I am working on. If you would like to use or share any of these poems, please contact me.
© Jennifer Ferraro, 2011- All rights reserved
