Imagine if you were to find 100 reasons to recite a blessing every day of your life. How might it transform your outlook and your world?
There is a Jewish tradition that requires we recite at least 100 blessings a day. For an Orthodox Jew who prays three times a day, this is fairly easy to accomplish. But the practice has life-changing benefits for all of us, no matter what our religious or spiritual practice, if we have no spiritual practice, or if we are secular. It’s about cultivating full awareness, a sense of loving and being loved, of gratitude and awe.
Blessings are everywhere, although we tend to overlook those opportunities. We are busy with our lives, or we are overwhelmed with the difficulty of our days. Life can seem random, full of disappointment and loss, even ugly and brutal. How do we know love in the midst of that?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “It is well known that the Chinese ideogram for ‘crisis’ also means ‘opportunity.’ Any civilisation that can see the blessing within the curse, the fragment of light within the heart of darkness, has within it the capacity to endure.” Jacob wrestles with the angel, is permanently damaged but refuses to leave without a blessing, forcing the angel to see and acknowledge him in his pain.
100 blessings is about cultivating the awareness that is the foundation of radical love and joy.