Blessings

[triskellian]

Someone in the finance department of the institution I work for always finishes his phone calls with 'bless you'. I just took a message from him for an officemate, and received his blessings along with his thanks, and thus was born a poll:

Poll Blessings

Comments

[ar_gemlad]

I bless people when they sneeze - or rather I say the words - but it's habit more than anything.
I receive blessings when I go to church, but I would feel uncomfortable being 'blessed' by a random person that I don't know. It seems somewhat of a violation (although that's way too strong a word for my level of feeling) to be blessed without having the option to not receive the blessing.
However, I wouldn't mind someone saying 'peace be with you' (as is our church's custom) or even 'Lord bless you', as that is a kind of intermediary request to God, rather than a 'thou shalt be blessed' demand.
Also, I wouldn't mind someone praying for me without asking - again it seems more intercessionary than demanding.

[triskellian]

Heh. This ties nicely into yesterday's conversation about telekinesis, y'know - is it still a blessing if you have to ask a god to do it for you? ;-)

'Peace be with you' seems entirely unobjectionable to me, but I'm not at all sure how I'd feel about someone praying for me. I think it would depend very heavily on who they were, and what kind of relationship I had with them and their religion. (And also with whether I suspected they were praying for me be saved from my godless ways!)

[ar_gemlad]

How about if someone prayed for you to be saved from your non-telekinesis ways?

(And is the Force a god or not?!)

[triskellian]

Hmmm. If they were likely to be successful, I think I might be able to tolerate that!

(For the purposes of the poll, the Force is a god if the person who believes in it conceptualises it as a god, and not otherwise ;-)

[lanfykins]

I think if someone 'peace be with you'ed me, I'd go straight into Catholic response mode :)

Peace be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.

Or whatever it is; after fourteen years, my memory's a little rusty.

[triskellian]

And while I recognise that, and could possibly have produced 'And also with you' from memory, 'peace be with you' on its own is entirely secular to me. The religious meaning has no essential link with the words.

[lanfykins]

There's no essential link, no, and I'd probably only blink for a second. It's just that I heard it so often at (Catholic) school, and so rarely in any other context.

[secretrebel]

It is very meet, right and our bounden duty that we should do so...

Yup. Me too!

[sea_of_flame]

That's in the C of E service too (well, the ASB:Rite B version anyway)...and you got it word perfect, according to my memory of it

[onebyone]

That's only right if they're a priest, though. If they're a civilian then you should shake their hand and say "peace be with you" back. Although some would argue not if they're Robert Mugabe.

[onebyone]

I think for full marks and best chance of confusing people, you should respond "wa alaykum as-salam".