Blessing You Cannot Turn Back For Holy Week

As if you could stop this blessing from washing over you.

As if you could turn it back, could return it from your body to the bowl, from the bowl to the pitcher, from the pitcher to the hand that set this blessing on its way.

As if you could change the course by which this blessing flows.

As if you could control how it pours over you— unbidden, unsought, unasked,

yet startling in the way it matches the need you did not know you had.

As if you could become undrenched.

As if you could resist gathering it up in your two hands and letting your body follow the arc this blessing makes.

—Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook