Benedicere | Kenneth Sehested

May your home always be too small

to hold all your friends.

May your heart remain ever supple,

fearless in the face of threat,

jubilant in the grip of grace.

May your hands remain open,

caressing, never clenched,

save to pound the doors of all

who barter justice to the highest bidder.

May your heroes be earthy,

dusty-soled and rumpled,

hallowed but unhaloed,

guiding you through seasons of tremor and travail,

apprenticed to the godly art

of giggling amid haggard news and portentous circumstance.

May your hankering

be in rhythm with heaven’s,

whose covenant vows a dusty intersection with our own:

when creation’s hope and history rhyme.

May hosannas lilt from your lungs:

God is not done;

God is not yet done.

All flesh, I am told,

will behold;

will surely behold.