In Praise of Praise

Praise is somewhat of an old-fashioned word, and an even more old-fashioned practice. And for me, I grew up thinking that it mostly referred to a God quite significantly removed from insignificant me. It was a Sunday sort of thing.

But I am not thinking about that kind of praise today. Today I am engaged with a praise that gives merit, value, even esteem to aspects of my life, and to the qualities that seek to flower.

Praise is the act of making positive statements about a person, an object, or an idea. It contrasts to criticism and banishes blame. And I am focusing on making positive statements about my mind, my emotions, my intuition, and my body.

I praise my mind as the perfect creation of the divine. I praise my emotions as my perfect guidance mechanism. I praise my intuition as my never failing source of knowing, and my body as the incomparably beautiful and infinitely capable vehicle of my vitality.

I praise my every increasing wisdom, my power to communicate, my ability to care, my skill in sharing what is given me, and the growing energy that empowers me; that energy is zeal stirred up by words of praise.

I am unapologetic, and unconcerned about what others think of me. Today I lift my hands in total praise to the divine in me.

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow?

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” So begins the doxology that I sang every Sunday in my father’s church. Lying in the shadows, seeping through the words of the sermon, forming parentheses around the strains of the invitational hymn was the subtext that retribution, punishment and curses also flowed, and if I did not ‘get right with God’ the blessings would dry up, and the consequences of my sin would catch up with me in full measure.

Not my father's church

But, what if all that flows from the Divine, the eternal, the infinite is blessing? Somehow, within me, whatever name I use for this all encompassing Source, (Love, All that is, The Universe, God) I can find nothing but blessing in it. And if that be so, what is keeping me from being the beneficiary of the flow? It makes sense that it has something to do with me.

So, let me today affirm this. God is good! Her blessings are immeasurable, stocked up, waiting to be poured out! And I have a choice to face the windows of heaven, let fall away the barriers I have built around me, and allow the blessing in…first trickling through a crack in my wall, then showering me, now flooding me, until I have no option other than to swim and frolic in it’s endless flow.

Oh, is this what a heavenly choir is?

Praise Source from whom only blessing flows.