Jan Richardson’s new book is a collection of poetic blessings that explores grief, loss and healing while finding joy and love in human experiences, transforming pain into paths of courage. Reviewed by Tracey Edstein.
Richardson had me at the title, How the Stars Get in Your Bones. I love the reach of it: earthiness and density and solidity soaring into the firmament, lifting the ‘blesser’ above daily concerns without discounting the fact that ‘the bones’ aren’t going anywhere.
I see Jan Richardson as a worthy disciple of John O’Donohue, who retrieved the art of blessing from one confined to the clerical caste. Richardson is an accomplished artist and writer and an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church in the US.
In this, her third book of blessings, she addresses ‘the hard stuff’, which each of us knows intimately. She offers solace in a context of faith by acknowledging what is real, clearly drawing from experience, and reminding her reader that there is always more, although ‘the more’ may be:
“… in the story beneath
the story …
in the spaces between,
in the edges,
the margins
the mysterious gaps
the enticing and
fertile emptiness.
(‘Blessing the Story’)
How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings by Jan Richardson.
In her Preface, Richardson explains her “enduring fascination with blessings. … An ancient literary form that appears across spiritual traditions, a blessing is a distinctive, sometimes poetic constellation of words designed to call upon and convey God’s deep desire for our wholeness, both individually and in community.”
Importantly, she goes on to say, “… a blessing tends to be at its most powerful in the places of our greatest pain, fear, and loss, when the presence and love of God may be difficult to perceive.”
Lest you not be convinced that Richardson’s conviction is hard won, her husband of only a few years died as the result of surgical complications. Her earlier memoir Sparrow (2020) traces her journey through this sudden and profound grief.
A feature of Richardson’s blessings that particularly speaks to me is the bodiliness of her language. Again and again, she returns not only to the heart but to blood, veins, chambers and the pulse; to bone, tissue and nerve. It seems to me to be a particularly feminine understanding and one that really comes to grips with the realities she confronts.
Who live
in the spaces between
our breathing
in the corner
of our vision
in the hollows
of our bones
in the chambers
of our heart:
nowhere can they
be touched
yet still
how they move us …
(‘All Hallows Blessing’)
Richardson draws repeatedly upon the elements of bread and wine, of welcome and hospitality, of ache and healing, of joy and grief. While the blessings are not strictly speaking liturgical, there are echoes of the place of liturgy and prayer, Scripture and community in her faith life.
“… One room,
many rooms –
in this blessing
it is all the same.
The point is that
there is space
enough:
enough to make
a life, a home;
enough to make
a world;
enough to make
your way toward
the One who has made
this way for you.
(‘Blessing With Many Rooms’)
Since this edition of The Good Oil is the first for 2026, I offer you this ‘new year’ blessing:
Think of the year
as a house:
door flung wide
in welcome,
threshold swept
and waiting,
a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself
to you.
~
And may it be
In this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty.
and may it be
in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
and may it be
that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace
and light spill from every window
to welcome the stranger home.
(‘The Year as a House’)
There is much comfort and richness to be gained by sitting with, dipping into and out of, Jan Richardson’s luminous blessings. Her faith, survivor of grief, shines through in ways that ground you and lift your sights to the stars.
… this is how a blessing
becomes;
this is how a blessing
Is made:
from the broken things
we travel with
from here.”
(‘Every Bright Thing’)
How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings, Jan Richardson (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2025).
