Rose Petal Blessings

 I have been hit the last two weeks with a ridiculously high permeability to joy… It happens to me regularly as a hospice chaplain (go figure…). The previous two weeks...we have been blessing nurses for National Nurses Week…
 
It’s called a Blessing of the Hands...
It is more common in hospitals, where hospital chaplains go around with aromatic oils or holy water and force-feed some self-care and appreciation onto the nurses who have a deserved (notoriously long-suffering) reputation for being allergic to self-care. Ahem.
 
We do it with rose petals…which I just happen to have lying around in the bucket loads: organic rose petals…just in case you want to eat them.
 
It is soooo much fun to see the nurses (aides and other support staff) receive this ‘anointing’. Some groups take it very, very seriously (like I am administering Last Rites…) but others receive it with joy and gather the petals up and throw them at their fellow nurses.
 
The holy, rose-petal food fight is on…
 
I am grateful for this place that the vicissitudes (and a tornado…or two have blown me to)—this place of messy perfection. May yours sneak up on you as serendipitiously.

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