The air was fresh, so much more invigorating than the quick-breathe-before-I-freeze that was the norm last week.
I thought, “What a blessing.” It was, at least as I define blessings. Now, this isn’t saying I have a theological forte. My experience with theology is limited to the Baltimore Catechism. Maybe that is enough, but forewarned is forearmed.
This all began with a conversation with a friend about the need to “get away.” There had been an accumulation of stress so high for this particular gal that she felt a need to stop her normal life and get away to a place where she wasn’t needed and there were no pressures, only the quiet that comes from no responsibilities.
“It would be a blessing,” my friend said.
Which led my convoluted brain to Friday nights at 10 o’clock and the enormously-creative opening of “Blue Bloods.” The formula for each episode in the series is to present three story lines which are related in some way to a similar problem. As it gets closer to 11 p.m., each of the problems is unraveled in a lesson learned way, often reaffirmed at the obligatory Sunday dinner at the fictional Reagan home. Sunday dinner has become a central focus for the characters and the plot for “Blue Bloods” and each dinner starts with the blessing, a blessing that I remember from my youth at Our Lady of Perpetual Help school. “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts..”
The blessing reminds us that calling down good means reconnecting ourselves to that which creates good in the world that unites us. The emphasis of this blessing is decidedly on “us” in acknowledging that good and from which it emanates.
Looking for a place to find a separation from the craziness of life is not an unusual thing. How and where does one find that peace of place, a place of peace where you are blessed with a reunification?
Look around, it’s everywhere. I find it in the corners of the living room where a small lamp makes a pool of warm light on a cold night, in a meal lovingly prepared that serves our taste buds as well as our souls, in a walk along the trails at Baltimore Woods or along the creek in Marcellus Park, in the spot of sunlight that warms the sleeping cats, in the patterns that rain creates on windows and in the art of being, even in the hour it takes to watch a well-crafted television series.
While “Blue Bloods” offers the repetition of a blessing, there are mundane experiences in other television series that offer blessings through their story lines.
“All Creatures Great and Small” is a blessing each week.
Crafted from the works of James Herriot’s book of the same name, this television world is set in the Yorkshire Dales’ mid-20th century. The protagonists are veterinarians whose lives are set pieces for the reality of ministering to farm animals and pets while living lives as colleagues, friends, neighbors and family with the distinction among those alignments blurred more times than not. It is both a simpler time and one that is no different than the lives we live now. The characters are drawn with civility amidst the push and pull of life and death, caring, kindness and weary hours of hard work measured against what is the right thing to do. Each episode elevates the human condition, the conflicts laid out between what is best and less-than-best, gently linking fiction with the here and now…at least for me. There is something so familiar, a feeling of belonging. I feel blessed, reunited with the basic values with which I grew up, validated as to my place in the world, if only for an hour. It is like coming home to a place I’ve never been before.
For my frazzled friend, I hold out hope that she finds a blessing to take her home.
