Bless This House and Be Your Home Also Blessed

In the doorbell recess of my grandmother’s front hall, hangs a weathered parchment with this House Blessing:

Bless the four corners of this House

And be the Lintel Blest;

And bless the Hearth and bless the Board

And bless each Place of Rest;

And bless the door that opens wide

To Stranger as to Kin;

And bless each crystal Window-pane,

That lets the Sunlight in;

And bless the Rooftree overhead

And every sturdy Wall:

The Peace of man, the Peace of God,

And Peace of Love on All. 

It’s the familiar corner-of-my-eye vision of it, that registers safety, and touches my heart. 

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Author unknown, calligrapher, who put pen to parchment, long gone to dust, as is my dear Gram, but when my husband, children, and I moved into our current home, I placed the blessing, now protected in a frame, in the doorbell recess here.

Mama Barbara tried her hand at calligraphing it, to replace the crumbling, fading, turning to dust, one. Hers will hang in the bell-well until we move, then we’ll see which of the two will fit in the recess in the wall of the new home - if either.

As the mantle of matriarch is passed from mother to daughter, in our family, so is this House Blessing. Even though some might wish it didn’t have the G-d word in it, I shall place one version of it in this new home as we start a new adventure. Continuity is comforting.

My mother eschewed matriarchy. Until Grammy and Gramps became too infirm to host Thanksgiving, the family always gathered there, at their home in West Los Angeles. After their deaths, the mantle passed over Mama Barbara, perhaps to her relief, and landed on my shoulders. 

I love that my mom was avant guard. I love that she felt more at home in the library than in the kitchen. I love her calligraphy, and some of her writing. I love that she taught us every name for every tree, flower, bird, and bush, and that we went camping for more than a few Thanksgivings, while the grandparents stayed in a nearby motel.

Still, my affiliation is closer with my Gram than with Mama Barbara, when it comes to blessing “the door that opens wide to Stranger as to Kin.” It’s not that my mom was anti-social, but rather that she seemed to chafe a bit under the mantle. Neither House Blessing version would have fit, anyway, in the John Lautner mid-century modern, where I grew up, and for years there WAS no doorbell, nor well for it, in any wall, only a few cow-bells hung on the redwood gate.

This Thanksgiving will be the last we host in this house; a bitter sweet occasion. 

2015 we invite the family to caravan up to Oakland and partake of the extra coolness of the Oakland Autumn, and of the Bay Area too-cool-for-school vibe.

May your Thursday be the best of all Thursdays past, and the least of those to come.

Thank you for reading this!