Hi friends-

The other day, a couple of us had the opportunity to visit with part of a nursing team that serves moms and babies in high-risk pregnancies and births. It’s a team that I wish had been in existence thirty-five years ago. I’m grateful for them now. (I talked about our story in “Bearing withness“.)

About ten of us gathered in a conference room, heard about the stories for that day, and then I said these words to the team:

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I understand the heritage of the blessing of the hands.

But I was thinking yesterday that we could do a blessing of the eyes.

Your eye contact, or respectful avoidance of eye contact, provides moms with a clear acknowledgment that they are not patients, or problems, or diagnoses, they are people.

We could do a blessing of the ears.

Your attentiveness to symptoms and stories provides moms with perhaps the only people that understand the strange words on the screen or the terrifying silence in the middle of the night.

We could do a blessing of the voicebox.

The words you speak and the silences you offer provide moms with hope and comfort and direction. And you give them the pronunciations of words like trisomy and geriatric and an-encephaly and fine. Just fine.

But it would be odd to put oil on your eyes or ears or mouth.

So we bless your hands.

God, bless this oil to heal and to celebrate. Bless these coworkers whom I respect so much as they care for the people who come into this place. Amen.

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And then, on the back of their hands or their palms, I made small crosses and said, “May God bless your heart and your hands as you care for the sick.”

And yes, there were tears in my eyes. And theirs.

Amen.