Blessing It All: Rituals for Transition and Transformation

As humans, we grow and we change, we grieve and we celebrate. Let Blessing It All be your guide to foster meaning and community as you mark the moments in your life.

Our personal lives and the lives of our communities are marked by moments of transition and transformation. As individuals, we grow up, we move, we start new schools and new jobs, we begin and end relationships, we have children and if we are lucky we get to watch them grow, we lose people we love, and we discover more about who we are. As communities, we honor people entering new life stages, we reckon with natural disasters and national traumas, and year after year we mark the cycles of the seasons.

Traditionally, we often mark birth, marriage, and death, and yet these are not the only moments that touch our lives and shape who we are. In this stunning collection, editors and ministers Heather Concannon and Allison Palm and contributors invite you to bless it all—moments that are ordinary and profound, tender and heartbreaking, joyful and celebratory, and everything in between.

An expansive collection, the rituals in Blessing It All foster community, joy, and healing in moments like the joining of a blended family, changing names and pronouns, honoring Pride Month, having an abortion, getting a prosthesis, surviving sexual assault, ending a marriage, and so many others.

The rituals—written by a diverse array of contributors with lived experiences that add depth and authenticity to each offering—are designed to be led by anyone inspired to do so, with clear instructions and additional insights and guidance. They are suitable for communities, congregations, family, and individual use. And they can happen anywhere our lives happen, wherever people or families or communities gather, because that is where we encounter the holy.

May you find connection and commitment, inspiration and invitation, a blessing and a balm in these rituals.

Heather Concannon serves as the settled minister of the Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Previously she served as the Minister of Faith Formation at the Unitarian Universalist Area Church in Sherborn, Massachusetts. She is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and lives in Boston with her family.

Allison Palm serves as the settled minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire. Previously, she worked for the UU Ministers Association and served congregations on Long Island and in the Boston area. She is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist from Minnesota and lives in Nashua with her family.