When I am not traveling, on Sunday mornings you can usually find me at a Unitarian Universalist Church here in Rochester, NY. This morning, Rev. Sally Hamlin talked about blessings–how our lives are filled with blessings that we often don’t notice, and making the choice to bless everything around us. She ended her sermon by saying, “If you can’t bless it, create it new.”
This statement shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I talk all the time about shifting our focus from problem solving to creating new realities. But this was yet another way to look at where we are in the world, and a way of discerning when it is time to create something new. If there is something in your life that you cannot bring yourself to bless, then it is time to create it new–to transform it into something that you can bless! The fact that you can’t bring yourself to bless it is a call to create something that you can.
We face many challenges in our world. As a society, we argue over them. We analyze and strategize and posture and where is it getting us? We’re still just going round and round in the same stuff. I love the simplicity of Sally’s words: “If you can’t bless it, create it new.” If you can’t find it within yourself to bless any part of your life or any part of what is happening in our world, then start doing something to create it new. Chances are you are not the only person who feels that way. So you don’t have to create it new by yourself. It is not your sole responsibility. It is a shared responsibility–shared by all of us!
So look around you–in your personal life, in your work life, in your community, in your country, in the world–what can you not bless? Then take one step today and another one tomorrow to begin creating something new that you will be happy to bless–perhaps that you can even celebrate! Just take a step, and then another one. Don’t worry about how you can get to the end. Just take a step, and then another, and then another. That’s a start.
“If you can’t bless it, create it new.” Thanks, Sally.
