A blessing for the new year in your family business

Over the last two years, I used the biblical stories of Jacob and Esau, and King David, to reflect on challenges and opportunities in family businesses. I also spent some time in the book of Proverbs.

For 2023, I’m trying my hand at several “blessings” for the family business. My inspiration comes from the late Irish priest John O’Donohue, and specifically his book To Bless the Space Between Us. Here is one of O’Donohue’s many thoughts on the concept of a blessing:

While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things—multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want—we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. With the demise of religion, many people are left stranded in a chasm of emptiness and doubt; without rituals to recognize, celebrate, or negotiate the vital thresholds of people’s lives, the key crossings pass by, undistinguished from the mundane, everyday rituals of life. This is where we need to retrieve and reawaken our capacity for blessing. If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention, the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for. This is where blessing invokes and awakens every gift the crossing has to offer.

A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence. The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds.

My goal in these twice-monthly mailings is to offer a few words for hope, healing, or thanksgiving, a passage from the Bible, and questions or a suggestion for further reflection in your family or family business. Here is a blessing for the end of the year and the beginning of a new year:

As we turn the page on another year 
   In the story of our families, in the record of our businesses
As the numbers are tallied, as comparisons are made
   We recollect unexpected blessings and count newfound opportunities.
Also with us are painful experiences, and difficult goodbyes
   What we allow to linger sets a tone for the new year
Our abundance is shaped by the blessings we remember.

In the months ahead, may you 
   Recall wisdom gleaned from this past year
   Restore relationships meaningful to your future, and
   Rekindle your passion for your family and your business.

You crown the year with your bounty;
    your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. (Psalm 65:11)