Blessed Are You on the Struggle Bus

On the life-saving art of writing absurd beatitudes

photo by Elisabeth lies

Happy new year, readers! I’m dropping into your inbox today with a little essay about the life-saving art of writing absurd beatitudes when times become weird or craptastic. If you’ve ever grown tired of the “hashtag-blessed” culture, or even feeling like you’re on the wrong side of luck, this post is for you.

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“Blessed” is a pushy word. We’re obligated to offer it in certain situations, like above the heads of children in our care. “These are my blessings…” a mother says and smiles. She doesn’t mention months of nausea and hip pain, labor, sleep deprivation so disorienting she forgot her phone number. “Blessed” is a word we use to wipe away the grit of something. “Blessed” is Hallmark-sentimental, a Precious Moments figurine, a messy thing turned porcelain and cherubic. “Blessed” often doesn’t let in the whole story.

And “blessed” can also be a huge humble-brag. “I’m just so blessed,” says the person with the second home in the Hamptons. They drive a Tesla and live in a 4,000 square foot place with an elevator. “Blessed” here means “I chose to align my time with an industry our culture deems valuable.” In this case, “Blessed” is a capitalist trophy, one people pretend was made by God. And on the eighth day, God Made #Blessed Trophies for all the winners!

We think of these #blessed gestures as borderline religious. All glory be to God. The athlete kisses the cross on his necklace, looks skyward, points up. Thanks, Jesus! The #blessed vacation photos on social media are code for, “My Higher Power wants me to have a week at a luxury resort!”

But I recently reheard the beatitudes. You know those? The litany of statements Jesus tells a crowd about all the people who are blessed? It’s a passage I thought I knew, because I spent 763 hours in high school listening to Simon and Garfunkel (yes, I also wore socks under my sandals.)

Blessed are the meek, for they… shall… inherit….

I knew the non-S&G version, too. The Jesus version. Blessed are the persecuted, the downtrodden, etc., etc. I thought it was a way to make the many oppressed people in the crowd feel better: Don’t worry, you’ll get yours. Comfort for the #unblessed. Or something like that.

The Bible can be weird. It can sound all antiquated and irrelevant. And then all the sudden, it breaks open, becomes fresh and new. And that’s what happened the other day when I heard the beatitudes.

Say what? Blessed are the meek? You mean, not the giant guy gripping the Superbowl trophy?

And blessed are those who mourn. What-now? You mean, not the ones sending smiley holiday photo cards of their families intact, the literal word “blessed” arcing above them in an embossed foil script?

No? Instead, blessed are the ones too grieved to even send cards?

I suddenly experienced the disorientation the crowd probably experienced back in Jesus’ day, when they heard the strange rabbi throw their culture’s beliefs upside-down. Beliefs about who’s “in” and who’s “out.” Beliefs people still carry today, even among so-called “Christian” circles. Blessed means favored by God. How could God favor the person who is grieving? The person who is powerless? The person who does not actually experience “righteousness” but is just really really “hungry for” it? This scrappy rabbi was tossing the agreed-upon understanding of “blessed” on its head.

Blessed are you in this shitty spot that your culture teaches you is not-at-all blessed.

Blessed are you in this place the world would call cursed.

That’s what I suddenly heard in the beatitudes.

Blessed is the garbage can. Divine Love finds you there.

“God hates me,” someone might say when the other shoe drops, or not just the other shoe but all the hats and gloves. The car breaks down, the diagnosis returns, the insurance company stops covering the medication. We feel unfavored in these moments. We feel utterly unblessed. (Some distorted versions of Christianity even say that we are.)

But the literal beatitudes say, Nope. We are blessed even in—maybe especially in—those circumstances our culture calls “cursed.”

Since then, I’ve started writing little beatitudes in my head. When some minor shitstorm befalls me, I write an absurdly specific beatitude. Here are a few recent ones:

Blessed are you whose oven breaks a day before your husband gets Covid.

Blessed are you whose hand is stung in the night by European paper wasps, because they’ve infested your broken air conditioning unit, which is built into the wall and you’re not sure how to remove it.

Blessed are you whose mammogram tech gaslit you about the crappy experience you had last time. “We would never do that,” she said. Blessed are you and your mammary glands.

I guess this turns the shitty moment into a prayer. This practice has the uncanny ability of making me like there is Infinite Goodness and Love, even here, in this dumb situation. I am not “forsaken” or “forgotten.” I have not “fallen out of favor.” I am blessed. Wasp-stung swollen hand and all.

My friend’s daughter said it looked like a “baby hand.”

Alright, I’m gonna tread lightly on this next part. In no way do I mean for my next suggestion to strong-arm some kind of silver lining moment. Please, some things are just shitty, and that’s fine.

But sometimes I spontaneously add a “part two” to my beatitude, a “for you shall…” clause. Not always. Some days, it’s not at all apparent how a garbage situation could offer some redemption or healing or light. But other times, the actual blessedness of a situation becomes clear, or at least makes me laugh.

Blessed are you whose oven breaks, for you shall receive the gift of asking your neighbor to borrow their air fryer.

Blessed are you whose bedroom is crowded with wasps, for you shall meet a delightfully chill exterminator in his seventies who smells strongly of weed. Blessed are you, for you shall know how even more blessed you will soon be—sleeping wasp-free.

Blessed are you whose mammogram tech gaslit you, for your girlfriends will offer hilarious breast support in commiserating texts. And you shall walk in solidarity with every patient who’s ever been gaslit, which is so many, which is disproportionately patients of color.

I don’t suggest that we reframe every awful thing into forced “blessings.” But I found myself inspired to both name shitty situations as blessed, and gently reach toward a truthful statement about how I might be experiencing the presence of Love, right in the situation.

So, I say this to you: If you are on the struggle bus, blessed are you. Maybe try giving your particular Struggle Bus the language of an absurdly specific beatitude.

“Blessed Are You Who… Was about to Be On Time For Once, But Then Saw the Ice on the Car Windshield.”

“Blessed Are You… Whose Kid Just Woke Her Up For the Tenth Time Tonight”

“Blessed Are You Who… Failed to Keep Their New Year’s Resolution for Even Three Days.”

And if you feel in any way inspired to offer a part two, go ahead and try it out. For you shall…

For instance: For you shall remember others on the same struggle bus. And they shall make you laugh heartily, and/or remind you of what it means to be human.

I’d love to hear your absurdly specific beatitudes. Share them below!

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Tidbits & Things

• Seriously, happy new year! Are you the reflecting type? I am, and I very much dig

  Emily P. Freeman
  ‘s suggestion to take all of January to do what some of us try to squeeze into the few days between Christmas and New Year’s: reflect on the past year. As a person on the academic calendar, I find that late July/early Aug (right after my birthday) works best for my yearly reflecting. So those are options if you missed late December: birthdays & summers.

• Are you the forward-thinking type? The writing and goal-setting type?

  Nancy Reddy
  is offering TWO fun parties for you: a vision-board-making party, and a goal-setting party. (My schedule makes both hard, but I’m gonna try to get to at least one.)

• P.S. We got the busted AC unit (a.k.a. the wasp condo) out of the bedroom wall, thanks to my father-in-law!