milk & honey mamas

Theological Background by Kristen

But behold, my sons and my daughters, I cannot go down to my grave save I should leave a blessing upon you …

2 Nephi 4:5

I cannot die, Nephi writes of Lehi, before I leave my blessing upon my posterity. 

For Joseph, the blessing is the connection between the ever arching reach of the divine covenant. See yourself in the ancestors, Lehi prays over him. See yourself in the souls that will come after you. See in yourself a long, unbroken line of connection in the promise of Abraham. See the sealing chain, held in the heart of God. This is the hope and dream of Lehi, that his diaspora is a chapter written by the hand of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

Then he calls the families of Laman and Lemuel. I imagine them gathering at the tent of the Patriarch. Perhaps the littlest ones were carried in their parents’ arms, with gentle shushes as the prophet spoke. We cannot know what Lehi’s children brought there, what unresolved grievances, hurts, and bitterness bloomed beneath the pretense of respect. Did Lehi touch them, in the manner of ancient anointing? Did he take them by the hand, look into their eyes, or was his sight gone? Could he hear the voices of his tiny grandchildren, asking what was happening to grandpa? Did he sit, or was his body too frail even to look his sons in the eye? 

Whatever the scene, he blesses them with a blessing that reveals the pain he carries to his grave. He fears the coming of a dreadful curse on his eldest sons. The blessing gives hope for his grandchildren and their posterity and, in a tragic finality, places responsibility for destruction on his own sons. How Lehi must have wrestled with God in anguish as he contemplated the fate he believed for his children. This is a sad moment in the life of a parent’s love. Lehi knows, I think, that his eldest sons will not take up the covenant he so earnestly believes in.

For Lehi, this is the ultimate tragedy. The covenant for him is life itself. 

For me, the tragedy is the rupture. After Lehi dies, the children splinter apart with bitterness and blame growing in hearts on both sides. The hope of Lehi’s vision is never realized. But he dies believing, heart deep, that the original blessing still holds. That the Abrahamic covenant holds them all in its power like a heartbeat, enfolding and protecting. This is the blessing he leaves with his children, in the face of the tragedy he fears and which does come to pass: that far from home, they are caught up in God’s hands, carried forward in the warmth of the covenant passed through the generations. Living in that promise, there is always hope. With his last breath, anticipating the fulfilled nightmare of his wilderness vision, he leaves a blessing of the promise.

Like Lehi, we hope in the original blessing. Like Lehi, we take our children in our arms and place our hope upon them. It may be that all blessings are in the anticipation or wake of tragedy. It may be that this is why we leave blessings upon each other. Because we know the fragility of life and the inevitability of rupture. Yet we lay our hands on our children and invoke hope, and the promises of our parents, and we breathe into them our longings that they will be well, and their children will be well, and their world will be well.

Ideas for Play

Contributed by Kristen

• Listen to or read the Book of Mormon storybook

• Read some Jewish blessings

• Read A Child’s Book of Blessings   

• Write your own blessing for your child(ren) to give to them or share later 

• Talk about the original blessing and covenant between God and Israel

• Watch this video

• Read Abraham’s Search for God by Jaqueline Jules

Poetry

Compiled by Caroline

FOR A NEW BEGINNING
by John O’Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Art

Compiled by Caroline

Music

Compiled by Caroline

Father Hear the Prayer We Offer, Page CXVI

Restore Us Again (feat. Liz Vice), Paul Zach