Bless who? What?

     Many years ago, when I was in seminary (training to become an Episcopal priest), one of my professors bemoaned some of our culture's practices of "blessing". Certainly clergy are called upon (or empowered) to invoke God's blessing at various significant moments (such as at baptisms or weddings). But, in his opinion, that practice had gone a bit too far. Examples he raised were the "blessing of the fleet", or the "blessing of the hounds" (before a fox hunt) -- "We're blessing dogs to kill a fox?". The particular blessing that occasioned his harangue was that of a grave at a funeral. His comment: "Now they've got us blessing holes in the ground! We're blessing an absence of dirt!"
      Ever since then, I've wondered about the process/practice of blessing -- who is blessing who/what and why? For example, many of us, regardless of religious leanings, might say "Bless you!" when someone sneezes. Why? While the "HowStuffWorks" website provides a good historical background for this practice, the reason I'd always heard was that the respondent was wishing the sneezer well for "sneezing the devil/demon out". But an even more puzzling distinction, at least to me, is the distinction between blessing God for something (many Jewish prayers begin with a blessing of God) as opposed to asking God to bless something (such as the implied request in "God Bless America").
      This "pondering" on my part was occasioned anew recently when I heard that the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops* had its annual gathering in Alaska. While they gathered for a variety of reasons, one chief focus of their time together was to talk about environmental and racial justice. I, for one, am very glad that they were focusing on those issues! And part of what a portion of them did, while there, in line with that focus was to "bless" the land/water.
      Again, I'm very much in favor of their drawing attention to issues of environmental justice, especially in Alaska! (As an angler and environmentalist, I'm concerned about the potential development of the Pebble Mine near Bristol Bay, and the impact that mine will have on an amazing salmon fishery.) But I found something a little odd with a bunch of folks "blessing" land/water that, in the words of Genesis, God had already decided was "good" (1.9-10). Yes, symbolic action is important (just consider how the symbolic action of "taking a knee" has taken over the national attention). And I can see that bishops blessing the land/water is a counterpart to other peoples' pollution and degradation of the land/water.
       But I can't help but think that we have the "blessing" thing backwards, especially when it comes to the earth (and I don't just mean Episcopalians or any other people of faith). At least the Abrahamic traditions assert that the earth was blessed by God in creation, and humans are the beneficiaries and stewards of that blessed earth. We continue to be blessed by the earth despite our misuse of it. Perhaps what we really need to do is develop a ceremony of (1) receiving that blessing, (2) repentance of our misappropriation of that blessing, and (3) commitment to honor that blessing. We are blessed by, not those who bless, the land and water.

Namasté

Gary

* Bishops, in the Episcopal Church, are the chief clergy members in a diocese -- a geographical area. The "House of Bishops" is the aggregate of those bishops in the United States.