"God be with thee in every pass,
Jesus be with thee on every hill,
Spirit be with thee on every stream,
Headland and ridge and lawn;
Each sea and land, each moor and meadow,
Each lying down, each rising up,
In the trough of the waves, on the crest of the billows,
Each step of the journey thou goest."
~Carmina Gadelica

I had held off for some time in purchasing the book Carmina Gadelica. This large anthology of poems and prayers from the Gaelic oral tradition is the most comprehensive ever collected. The writings came from communities all over the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The volume represents words shared or performed at evening gatherings, ceilidhs, and were passed down from generation to generation. They were compiled by Alexander Carmichael(1832-1912). I could hold off no longer and the book arrived in the mail this week.

The pages are filled with blessings for looms,baptisms,hunting, fishing, meals,sheep & cattle. It represents prayers spoken for the beginning and the ending of days. Sprinkled throughout are prayers for milking and the growing of gardens and their harvest. The poems are full of the lore of those who lived close to the land and saw the presence of the Sacred in the moving of, not only the seasons, the ocean and the sky, but the very movements of ordinary tasks of daily life. Each movement was blessed and honored for its holiness. The prayers also represent the pre-Christian understanding of the Holy One and the later layering on of their love of Christ brought to the beautiful, yet often desolate, landscape by the Roman church.

Most Westerners have learned to limit their blessing to Sundays and special days…..birthdays, anniversaries,weddings, funerals. We rarely think of blessing the path we wake up to take each morning or even less the work we are about to do that day. I had a friend once whose mother blessed him with holy water on the first day of school which, when he told the story, most people laughed and thought odd. And yet what parent wouldn't love to have the thought, or courage, to do something similar?

These ancient wise ones knew the gift of honoring the Sacred that walks with us in each step, that hovers in each breath. They prayed God's blessing on the animals that gave them milk, that became their food. They saw the sacredness of the wool that moved from sheep to warp and loom giving them warmth in cold, wet winters. As they rose and rekindled the fire that warmed their hearth, they asked God's blessing on their home and all that would transpire there that day. They claimed the Spirit's presence that travels with each of us in the moments, the days, the years of this pilgrim life.

The words may be ancient but the wisdom still rings true. Wherever your path takes you this day, may the blessing of God be with you at every pass.

My days have been so full that I have found little time to sit down and write. With our son's graduation, the celebration of Pentecost, family in town, and general end of the school year events, each days is bigger than the next. All these wonderful happenings can cause me to think about the next thing to do rather than the act of being fully present in the moment. In the moment is where the gift is, we all known this. And yet,  I often forget and want to project ahead to what needs to be done, what obligations I have, what in yet unknown. My mind tries to undone what has been done or do some future act rather than being exactly where I am.

At the graduation on Sunday evening, I tried to make myself be fully present to what was happening. I tried to send that same energy message to all those sitting in the strange get-up we use for these ceremonies. The mortarboard cap and gown is, I believe, one of the oddest outfits humans don, only outdone by some of the vestments of religious traditions. Asking people who have attained a certain goal to balance a little cap with a board on top is odd, don't you think? And yet who can help but have their heartstrings pull when they see someone they love standing in such attire?

Observing the high school students, many in dress clothes that were also foreign to them, I thought perhaps the mortarboard's role is to keep them fully present. In the excitement of the moment and all that led up to it, it would be so easy to be thinking about the 'after' rather than the moment. Perhaps balancing that little hat keeps your mind focused. In fact, the majority of the adult speeches were filled with wonderful advice was for the future. This is as it should be. But I hoped the graduates were savoring where they were right at that very moment. Not looking back, not looking forward. Just resting in a kind of time that will only come once for some. For those going to college a graduation ceremony may be in their future but it will not be like this first one nor, should it be. So my prayer was that they were taking it all in, the affirmations, the wise words, the sheer pride, the feeling of accomplishment, the joy of traveling these last four years with good friends and wise teachers.

Generally in our western culture we are much more focused on the future than the present. Yet one of the gifts of most faith traditions is the practice of being present to the breath of Spirit that fills us and moves among us. On this past Sunday we celebrated the gift of the Spirit to the followers of the way of Jesus. That Spirit, breathing in and through the people, allowed them to hear in new ways, in new forms of understanding languages they had not known before. The Spirit became the energy that bound them together, sent them into the world to be agents of change and transformation. The Spirit reminded them that, indeed, they were children of the Holy, made in the image of God and of God.

And isn't that, in so many ways, what we celebrated at the graduation? Each young person, filled with a unique spirit, bound together with their fellow travelers, on the brink of understanding new languages. Balancing their mortarboards was just the beginning of a journey that will call them again and again to the practice of being full present in a wonderful world that needs them for the gifts only they possess.

Regardless of age,the same is asked of each of us with the rising of the sun each morning. The Spirit still breathes, still invites us to open ourselves to new understanding, to new ways of hearing and being that bring change,transforming our world. The day is unfolding, inviting us to be full present. The good news is……we don't have to wear a mortarboard!