A Franciscan Blessing
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
Amen.
This prayer has anchored me through so many different seasons of life. I always brace myself a bit before I read it though, because I remember how it makes me feel each time I read it – it makes me feel exposed, humbled and scared. Exposed by the little lies I tell myself to justify my behaviors that limit my capacity to love, to welcome, to reconcile, to be present. Humbled by my limited understanding of who God is and how She is alive and active in our world. Scared by the risks that this prayer calls me to take on a daily basis.
It reminds me that God desires us to dwell in discomfort, because it is precisely in the discomfort where the Divine is at work. The Spirit moves and shakes and convicts and deconstructs and renews in the doubt, the fear, the vulnerable moments and the big scary questions that don’t have easy simple answers. I feel this truth deeply in my bones, yet for some reason, it seems I am continually relearning this lesson, season after season… instead of embracing and anticipating goodness in the wild, beautiful unknown of the next bend in the river of the journey of my life, I clothe myself with the armor of control, planning and self-limiting thinking.
So here’s to being human, to being in awe of my continually evolving understanding of who God is and how God works in our world and hearts and to committing myself to a life of serving as an absolutely imperfect and incredibly flawed instrument of God’s love and grace…
Hola! 
This is beautiful! Thanks for sharing, Amelia!