Blessing of the Well

If you stand at the edge of this blessing and call down into it, you will hear your words return to you.

If you lean in and listen close, you will hear this blessing give the story of your life back to you.

Quiet your voice. Quiet your judgment. Quiet the way you always tell your story to yourself.

Quiet all these and you will hear the whole of it and the hollows of it: the spaces in the telling, the gaps where you hesitate to go.

Sit at the rim of this blessing. Press your ear to its lip, its sides, its curves that were carved out long ago by those whose thirst drove them deep, those who dug into the layers with only their hands and hope.

Rest yourself beside this blessing and you will begin to hear the sound of water entering the gaps.

Still yourself and you will feel it rising up within you, filling every emptiness, springing forth anew.

—Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace