One of our main topics of discussion was religion. Erika is Methodist, and I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We had some great conversations about our experiences with God's love and our faith. Erika asked wonderful and genuine questions about my church, and I felt a lot of enthusiasm about answering them. One thing she asked about was patriarchal blessings. I was really excited about that because patriarchal blessings have been a big part of my life!
In my Church, members have the opportunity to be given a one-time blessing by a patriarch - someone who is ordained specifically to give these blessings. The purpose of the blessing is to offer the individual guidance from Heavenly Father and to declare the persons' lineage in the House of Israel (read more here). The blessing can give counsel, promises, and warnings and help us understand our spiritual gifts.
We do not openly share or discuss the specifics of our patriarchal blessings, but I can tell you that mine has been very helpful throughout my life. The older I get, the more sense it makes, as I have seen portions of it fulfilled. Some couples choose to share theirs with each other. Scotty and I have read each other's, but we'd been married for several years before we did that. This is just based on personal choice.
The reason I say that patriarchal blessings have been a big part of my life is because my grandpa was a patriarch. This is an office in the Church that not many people hold. Patriarchs maintain that office through life unless it is lost through transgression. They may, for health reasons, stop actively giving blessings, but they remain patriarchs, as was the case with my grandpa (read more here).
Since my grandpa was a patriarch, my grandma was given the responsibility to type the blessings. Each individual is given a copy of his or her blessing so they can read it any time. The blessings are also maintained by the Church so if a person loses their copy, they can request one.
The blessings are not written down beforehand. The patriarch may jot down some notes, but the blessing is essentially dictated by the Spirit. It's quite phenomenal!
My grandpa would always have two tape recorders going when he gave blessings (the second one was for back-up in case there were any problems with the first one). My grandma would then listen to the tapes and type the blessings on her type writer (computers were eventually an option, but my grandma was mostly a typewriter gal).
I spent countless hours playing in my grandma's house while she sat in the office typing away to my grandpa's voice. I was always there since I lived right across the street. The recordings of my grandpa giving blessings were just part of the everyday background noise in my grandparent's house along with the clickety clack of the typewriter. Because of this, I grew up hearing hundreds of patriarchal blessings.
Another thing my grandma did was schedule the blessings. She always put the information for the individuals on post-its and hung them on the door frame next to the phone. Since my grandparents lived in our community, my grandpa gave blessings to a lot of my friends and school mates. I always loved checking the names on the door frame because there was usually a name of someone I knew.
Whenever my grandpa was giving blessings, my grandma would take the phone off the hook. We always knew that it was blessing time when we got the busy signal. Sometimes I'd sit in the window and watch across the street, waiting for the people to leave. Then I'd try calling to see if I got the busy signal. If I did, that meant another person was coming for a blessing, and I couldn't come over yet.
Even though my grandpa lived across the street, he wasn't in our stake, and therefore, wasn't our patriarch. With special permission, I was able to receive my blessing from my him when I was 17.
Not only was my grandpa a patriarch, my great-grandpa was as well. Patriarchs aren't common, but father & son patriarchs are even less so!
And all of that is why I nearly jumped for joy when I got to tell Erika about patriarchal blessings.
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For a fun read, check out this blog post where I gave a tour of my grandparents' house.
2 comments:
Cool story. I didn't really know that patriarch that did my blessing. That's fine and all but its neat that you got to have your blessing from our own grandpa.
I had such a wonderful time learning more about your faith, which has been an inspiration to me since I started reading your blog many moons ago. I’m so grateful you gave me the gift of your time and that we finally got to meet!
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