| Editor's Note: Issue #4 |
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What does it mean to receive the benediction, the priestly blessing, the ending, or in Greek, the good word? How do we lift our faces to meet His? Are there such things as literary benedictions? And if so, how do we create them, how do we add our small blessings to the definitive artistic canon?The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; The Lord make Those raised in the Catholic or Protestant traditions are probably most familiar with these words from Numbers, the way the priest or pastor calls us to stand, raises his hands up and outward and simultaneously blesses and dismisses the congregation. The repetition and holiness of this moment often quiets the coughs and shifting in the pews; my husband usually grabs my hand and breathes in, like this is the last good breathe of air to consume. And I am usually struck with chills, with shivers of peace. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, While researching our theme I found myself reading the Shemoneh Esrei, the eighteen Talmudic benedictions, and pausing over the eighth. It is a prayer prayed for healing, suddenly apt considering the submissions we had received, many of which were good words full of pain, of well-said grief, trauma, and even horror. This was not what we had expected. 8. Heal us, O L-rd, and we shall be healed; save us and we shall be saved; for You are our praise. Grant a perfect healing to all our wounds. It seems to be a quarterly lesson for us to suspend our assumptions, to consider that the only consistency in our “themes” may very well be this suspension. Perhaps because of the wars, the climate, the unrest and the urgency of now, for many of our contributors, benedictio was a blessing through pain—calling for ruminating, chewing, but also swallowing. Your words were found and I ate them: Jeremiah 15. In For the Time Being, Annie Dillard notices something about these eighteen Talmudic blessings. She says, “That number, meaning ‘life’ in Hebrew, corresponds to the eighteen vertebrae we bend when we pray.” Perhaps this is what it means to rise now--to stand with our wounded faces tilted upward, with all eighteen vertebrae, both receiving and creating the benediction, adding to the canon, healing, shivering. Blessings, Brianna Van Dyke |
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