Blessing

Streets of Haiti

Artist: Maccene Laurent

The Spirituality and Practice website offers the following today:

Another practice invites us to bless strangers quietly, secretly. Offer it to people you notice on the street, in the market, on the bus. "May you be happy. May you be at peace." Feel the blessing move through your body as you offer it. Notice how you both receive some benefit from the blessing. Gently, almost without effort, each and every blessing becomes a Sabbath.

— Wayne Muller in Sabbath

To Practice This Thought: Send out a blessing of happiness and peace to a stranger.

This is also known as the metta or lovingkindness practice. One form I learned is "May you be happy, may you be well, may everything be well in your life." We can do this for ourselves, for a loved one, for a friend, for a stranger and then, when we have a fair amount of practice, for a difficult person. This is a very skillful strategy for learning to love our enemies.