When I was in the MTC, one of the neat things missionaries did was get their patriarchal blessing shrunk down, double-sided and hard laminated so we could carry it in our pockets. The elders could fit them in their shirt’s breast pocket and sisters could tuck them into the side pocket on their scripture case. That way you could, I dunno, whip it out and check for a prophecy while we were out street contacting?
My entire district got their patriarchal blessings shrunk and laminated and I had to admit that my patriarchal blessing was three pages long, which defeated the whole purpose of having a one-page copy that fit in your hand. One of the elders nodded solemnly and said, “I heard that people who have a really long blessing need extra guidance.” He said this in a way that made it clear that extra guidance was not a good thing to need.
It turned out to be right. I mean, I did need extra guidance. Also, a good chunk of my patriarchal blessing was fluff and personal opinions. Church leaders emphasize that the most important part of the blessing is the part declaring our lineage. However, when I got my blessing, I was expecting something similar to a palm reading, with personalized advice and a few prophecies.
I’ve spent a lot of time angry with the Church, and I don’t even know where my blessing is at this point, but I have to admit I’ve had at least one profound experience with my blessing. My blessing goes on for a full paragraph with cautions about marriage, which I thought was completely unnecessary and a bit insulting. Then I got married. The weirdly specific details in that paragraph were irrelevant to dating this guy anyway. Then things got bad. Then I started praying about divorce. Then I realized that paragraph that I disliked so much was in the past tense and those weirdly specific details applied exactly to the situation I was in. All those cautions were about not staying in a bad marriage, not avoiding a bad marriage. I got chills. (And yes, I had to get into the bad marriage or else I wouldn’t have my children.)
My blessing also has a bunch of stuff about my life that was just dead wrong. In fact, trying to rely on those lines stretched out some of my hard times for much longer than necessary. I kept thinking that if that one paragraph in my patriarchal blessing was inspired, then the whole thing must be inspired. I was wrong.
Studying my patriarchal blessing was a lot like studying the scriptures. Not every word of the scriptures applies to everyone; not everything is a commandment; not everything is useful or helpful. Some stuff in my blessing applied in ways that made me believe that God knew me personally. And some of it seemed completely irrelevant, and other parts were just plain wrong. I now treat all inspired guidance as a jumping off point, not literal instructions from God. This avoids the need to rationalize and ignore things — I heard a woman once testify that her patriarchal blessing promised her that she would always have good health if she obeyed the Word of Wisdom, and, other than the cancer and diabetes, she’s seen that promise fulfilled.
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Questions:
- Do you have a patriarchal blessing? Was it good, bad or confusing?
- Do you (did you) regularly study the scriptures? Were they good, bad or confusing?
- Are there better ways for you to get promptings?
- Do you even want promptings?
Wheat & Tares 
Mine was dead wrong. The only part that I hoped was real prophecy for me, ended up being impossible with my husband’s career. Which career he was in at the time I got my blessing, so it wasn’t like my spouse screwed up my blessing by getting the wrong job. The part about me being a “comfort and blessing to my father in his old age” was a prophecy that I responded to as “over my dead body.” Seeing as my father was something between a sociopath and a narcissist and was abusive, I really wanted to be a pain in his side in his old age, not any any kind of comfort. And I never cared one bit what house of Israel I supposedly belonged to because I suspected all along that was totally unimportant to how one lived their life.
I think in general they are about like horoscopes. You can find things that fit and things that don’t fit because it is completely random, good sounding, slightly vague, ambiguous, crap.
Patriarchal blessings are like the temple ordinances, the Church’s standard works (scriptures), and the words of Church leaders. If you believe in them, they can have power and meaning in your life. If you do not believe in them, they do not. I can speak to this having been on both sides. I took my patriarchal blessing very seriously at the time (19 years old) but I now dismiss it completely.
I also think patriarchal blessings can be used as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The recipient reads about a full-time mission in his or her life, for example, and then feels obligated to carry it out. Same with temple marriage and paying tithing and a long list of other decisions. Also, these blessings tend to assume that a mission and temple marriage are in the best interests of everyone. Has anyone ever received a blessing that stated the recipient should not engage in one of these?
I never got my patriarchal blessing. As a young person, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life and I figured if God wanted to steer me in another direction, they could come and talk to me about it. Therefore, a patriarchal blessing would have been useless; if it had provided me with different advice or laid out my life differently than I had already, I would have simply ignored it. I think Anna’s got a great analogy with her comparison to horoscopes. That’s about how I view patriarchal blessings also.
To answer one of your questions, I don’t feel like I need promptings, so I rarely do anything to cultivate them. I have felt what I believed to be the Holy Ghost maybe three times in my life, so it hasn’t been a constant source of truth or light. I think through things, try to get as much information as I can, then make a decision. That’s how I prefer to do it. I don’t pay much attention to “promptings”, because in my experience (and with no intent to insult anyone), they’re really just mainly subjective emotional responses anyway.
Janey, hey fellow counselor. I have a question for which I need to preface by stating that I am NOT being critical of you in any way in my asking . I am sincerely curious. Please elaborate on specifically what you meant by “I now treat all inspired guidance as a jumping off point, not literal instructions from God”. BTW, I enjoy your posts!
My Patriarchal blessing seems prophetic until you know that I was two years into college and had a mission call before I got it, so some of the super specific details were more statement of present facts than prophecy. I haven’t read mine in probably 15 years or more. I know exactly where a copy is; I saw it just a couple of days ago, but I think I’m avoiding it because I expect myself to have a cynical reaction to rereading it. My recollection is that much of it is written as a statement of things that might happen. Two that come to mind are that I “might” pursue a doctoral degree (I haven’t) and that I might receive a calling a the “general church level” (I’m 41 years old and currently the assistant EQ secretary. I think I’m not quite on the track.) After a bad experience with a priesthood blessing about 9 years ago (the regular, non-patriarchal kind) I’ve had a hard time with all priesthood blessings.
OP: “Studying my patriarchal blessing was a lot like studying the scriptures. Not every word of the scriptures applies to everyone; not everything is a commandment; not everything is useful or helpful.”
Not every word of scripture applies to everyone, but I can at least hold out hope that all of it applies to someone. (Maybe? There are some weird bits.) But with a patriarchal blessing if it doesn’t apply to the recipient, then who is it possibly for? What other meaning can it have?
Do I want promptings? I cannot reconcile the God of the Lost Car Keys. I know people that see God in every butterfly and every good parking space (literally, someone bore testimony of the Miracle of the Good Parking Space). I can’t make that version of God work for me. That God is wasting time on minutia and letting too many truly terrible things happen. The only God I can work through personally is one that tends to leave us alone, and generally lets life run its course, good and bad. As such, I am content without promptings for the most part. To do otherwise feels like asking for frustration and anger.
I know that I will differ from other people in my thoughts. I am open to the possibility of inspiration and even revelation; however, in my opinion, priesthood holders give blessings using their own words and hopes and so forth. This applies to patriarchs giving patriarchal blessings as well as to fathers blessing babies and ministers blessing the sick — the speaker voices his hopes for the person being blessed, as voice for all those there assembled. The person giving the blessing does so using his own faith and the faith of others there — in my opinion, direct channeling from God Himself through the man giving the blessing is very rare; indeed, so rare as to say essentially never. It is a blessing given by a man holding the priesthood and in the name of the Lord, representative of the hopes and faith of those there assembled.
I love the idea of blessings! I just see them a little differently than others do.
When I first got mine (which was a great experience–the patriarch was a family friend and had been my Sunbeam teacher, then my bishop, and he made a pie based on my preference for afterward to break our fast), I was disappointed when I read it that there was a grammatical error in it, which eroded my confidence. I don’t know if he misspoke or it was an educational thing, but I was definitely skeptical about it. But overall, the blessing was short-ish (which I saw as better, God can self-edit and doesn’t blather on like an idiot, after all) and suited me. It described the kind of person I am pretty well.
Later, my friend got hers from a different patriarch, someone who was a stranger. Her blessing was twice as long as mine and had a lot of boiler plate phrases in it that didn’t seem unique to her. She was upset that it said her children would one day become useful citizens, which I told her could mean they would do something important in civic life (but secretly thought “Oh her kids are going to prison”), and she feared meant they would have intellectual disabilities (her mom worked with severely autistic kids and my friend’s thoughts immediately went to that). So she focused on “one day” and “become useful” and I was focused on “useful citizens.” I mean, now that her kids are adults I have no idea what that meant. Maybe that patriarch just said that to everyone, and it meant nothing.
For me, looking back, I don’t think my PB has been super relevant even though it described me well (as expected since I knew the patriarch). I also see the tribes as totally made up wishful thinking to give church members a sense of gravitas (lowkey racist assumptions go into these tribes, too, which is problematic).
But I did learn one thing through the process that wasn’t called out in my PB. Teen me (and probably adult me too) can be super judgmental. I glommed onto the grammatical error, even at age 16 like a hawk to a field mouse, and I immediately thought my blessing was better than my friend’s. So basically, I’m . . . not great.
As a convert at 11, when I had mine at age 13 it was a major part of my life that grounded me and gave me a sense of God’s purpose for me, and consequently helped me in making better decisions than I might otherwise have made.
Fast forward to my daughter’s, given by a close friend’s father, alongside 3 of her contemporaries. A wonderful way to bond them in friendship, and I was present throughout. They were pretty much generic and identical. I had talked up the experience and promised her an experience of greater communication with God. It was a terrible disappointment to both of us and confirmed both her disillusionment and mine with the church. I’ve never been able to put that right for either of us.
I remember that I had my patriarchal blessing printed out smaller and laminated so that it would fit in the pocket of my scriptural quad cover. Like you, I also don’t know where my blessing is. I regard it is mostly repeated pablum told to most every other young adult to get them to think that church membership was part of their destiny and that all sorts of good things would happen to them if they remained in the church and “faithful to their covenants.” I used to regard it as revelation. Now I just see it as mostly nonsensical. Especially the part in which they tell you which tribe you’re from.
On whether I read the scriptures or not, I read them quite a bit, but with very different eyes from what I used to. I read the Book of Mormon to see what parts are clearly lifted from the KJV. I read the OT as a window in the minds of ancient Israelites and see how they conceptualized governance, other cultures, god(s), justice, territory, etc. I like to read the New Testament to identify all of the Greek cultural influences in it. I like to read the D&C to look for verbatim textual passages from the KJV and as a window in to Joseph Smith’s mind.
I had no idea these things were written down. I guess I was imagining some old man making the “live long and prosper” hand-sign and chanting something in Hebrew or something.
If it were me, I’d be tempted to forge one with made-up prophecies on it.
Reflecting at midlife, the whole idea of a patriarchal blessing seems to me to fall somewhere between a peculiar holdover from 19th century American religious belief in religious mystery, and the more current, surging popularity of Zodiac signs as personal identity and destiny.
The way patriarchal blessings are styled leaves them open to the influence of cognitive bias–they can mean whatever the recipient wants them to mean, especially since most are full of platitudes.
My view of there utility is likely different compared to the way a TBM sees them. While the tribal assignment always confused me, including my own (I’m still not sure what it means, exactly), I enjoyed the rest of my blessing. Not because of what was said, but because of who gave it to me. My patriarch was a relative, and a man I knew and loved my entire life. He was kind, funny, spiritually generous, lowkey and understanding. At a time when my youth leaders and bishop were more committed to shaping us in a way that met their needs instead of our own, my patriarch was light hearted and a refuge. When he gave me the blessing, it was a way for him to express his love for me, and in my teenage awkwardness, a way for me to accept and value that expression of love. In my mind, if there is any value to a priesthood blessing, it is this one: a conveyance of love.
If I had not known my patriarch, the blessing may not have meant anything to me. I had always struggled to see priesthood holders as tools, as proxies; I see them as individuals. If I had no personal connection with them, the words and experience meant less to me.
Roll ahead many years. When my oldest turned 15-years-old she came to me and my wife and asked us if she could pursue receiving a patriarchal blessing. She had one request. A member of my family is a patriarch and our families are close, and my kids adore him. My daughter asked if he could give her the blessing. What an opportunity for deeper connection and meaning. And what do you think happened? Of course, it wasn’t possible because he was in another stake. I can’t remember what the church’s official line was, something about unless it is a child or grandchild, blah, blah, blah, you can’t have a patriarch outside of your stake give the blessing. I have to admit I was stunned. We pressed the matter through his stake president and through mine. No, with those sweet f-you smiles Mormons can be famous for giving, we were turned down with the saccharine assurance her experience with *her* patriarch would be golden. It wasn’t. On the day of her blessing, the patriarch, whom she had never met before, asked her to tell him about herself and her goals. She did. He repeated what she told him nearly verbatim in the blessing. It was painful to see her masked disappointment afterwards.
My other children didn’t request to have a blessing despite our telling them they may value the experience. Looking back, I’m glad they didn’t pursue one.
I sought for and received a patriarchal blessing during my college years. While it contained several specific things about my future (most of them contingent on choices I made during college), none of them materialized. For decades I felt I must have consistently made wrong choices early on because my life didn’t look anything like the blessing mentioned. And there is no way it could in the future – that ship has sailed. So, not a positive thing for me.
I loved my patriarchal blessing. As an insecure 14 year old girl I imagined I would never marry. The patriarch blessed me that I would marry in the temple and then paused. In that long pause I thought “Great, I will be Captain Moroni’s 500th wife.”
Then with great confidence the patriarch explained that the man I would marry in the temple was preparing himself to marry me right now, and that we would meet, and we would recognize each other, and we would marry and that he would love and cherish me. It actually did happen in a way that matched this and the blessing did strengthen me and help me to wait, hope and grow, which I am sure did help those things to happen.
I still cherish that blessing that has many other supportive ideas in it.
Years later an older man, a friend of our family who converted later in life after being married to a member for many years, got a patriarchal blessing from the same patriarch. This time he wasn’t so inspired. In the blessing he told my friend God was so happy that he had stopped worshipping the devil and doing satanic rituals.
My friend never had been involved in such things and was seriously disillusioned and confused by the patriarch ‘s comments. His account of the situation disillusioned me as well. I wonder if the very aged patriarch had become senile and less inspired. I accept that all people and leaders are fallible. If they are inspired sometimes they are not necessarily inspired each time.
I hoped my children would be supported and helped by a patriarchal blessing as I was, but I did feel I had to be honest about the fallibility of all leaders, and share my friend’s experience.
Sadly, it isn’t faith inspiring to hear sometimes…
None of my kids have got the blessing. I feel ambiguous about this… I am relieved I don’t have to worry about a bad experience and sad that we can’t count on a supportive experience.
My stake was atypical and had two active patriarchs. One lived up the street from me and knew my family, so I assumed I would go to him. My parents said it would be better to go to the other patriarch because the first was grumpy, ancient, and openly racist. I’m glad they steered me away from him.
I met the other patriarch for the first time when I went to receive the blessing. He was cheerful & friendly and it was immediately apparent that he took the responsibility very thoughtfully and seriously. The blessing itself was surprisingly personal coming from someone I’d never met before. My best friend had also never met him and had a similar experience. Our blessings were nothing alike. I found it helpful and inspiring.
One interesting tidbit was that it mentioned very specifically to study languages. I remember in high school thinking out of the blue that I should take a specific language class…I didn’t do it because I decided to take a class with a specific girl instead.
A couple years later I got a mission call…then a week before I was supposed to leave, I got a phone call from my stake president saying they’d changed my mission call and I’d now be speaking the same language I decided not to study earlier. It was a very strange moment, and definitely had a feeling of “well…crap.” Since then I’ve enjoyed studying languages and learned I have a real talent for it that I’d never realized before.
Was that totally random, and just good luck? Maybe…but I can’t deny that it pointed out a specific talent I had never considered, totally disregarded, and then still got it right.
My stake was atypical and had two active patriarchs. One lived up the street from me and knew my family, so I assumed I would go to him. My parents said it would be better to go to the other patriarch because the first was grumpy, ancient, and openly racist. I’m glad they steered me away from him.
I met the other patriarch for the first time when I went to receive the blessing. He was cheerful & friendly and it was immediately apparent that he took the responsibility very thoughtfully and seriously. The blessing itself was surprisingly personal coming from someone I’d never met before. My best friend had also never met him and had a similar experience. Our blessings were nothing alike. I found it helpful and inspiring.
One interesting tidbit was that it mentioned very specifically to study languages. I remember in high school thinking out of the blue that I should take a specific language class…I didn’t do it because I decided to take a class with a specific girl instead.
A couple years later I got a mission call…then a week before I was supposed to leave, I got a phone call from my stake president saying they’d changed my mission call and I’d now be speaking the same language I decided not to study earlier. It was a very strange moment, and definitely had a feeling of “well…crap.” Since then I’ve enjoyed studying languages and learned I have a real talent for it that I’d never realized before.
Was that totally random, and just good luck? Maybe…but I can’t deny that it pointed out a specific talent I had never considered, totally disregarded, and then still got it right.
josh h – you wrote: “Also, these blessings tend to assume that a mission and temple marriage are in the best interests of everyone. Has anyone ever received a blessing that stated the recipient should not engage in one of these?” I can tell you that I got a very dumbfounded look from a bishop when I told him that my patriarchal blessing was telling me to get divorced. lol.
About promptings. I used to live my life by promptings. I didn’t trust my own judgment and no real sense of myself as a separate person. Following promptings was a lifeline for me. Then I got my emotional life straightened out, and now I understand how someone could not want/need promptings. Now that I trust my own judgment and have a sense of purpose, I don’t seek for promptings anymore. I really need to write a memoir. I feel like I’ve lived two separate lives. I will say that promptings (for me) were distinct from emotional experiences. Due to the complex trauma I suffered as a child, I really had no idea on what my emotions were or how to figure out how I felt about something. Emotions were confusing and painful. Promptings were peace and certainty. I needed them, and similar to josh h, I took mine very seriously at the time. God met me where I was willing to receive guidance, and he used my patriarchal blessing to do it (that one time).
DM76 – you asked: Please elaborate on specifically what you meant by “I now treat all inspired guidance as a jumping off point, not literal instructions from God”.
I used to try and make everything applicable and meaningful. Church leaders used to say something like, “when you pick up a stick, you pick up both ends.” It’s an objection to cafeteria beliefs and picking out what you believe and what you don’t. I was rather fanatical in trying to believe every word applied to me, if I could just unlock the secret application. Now I handle things more like ji described. These words are meant sincerely, but mostly they come from mortal men and that channels their beliefs and limits. Sometimes there will be an inspired nugget; most of it will be their opinion. Perhaps that sentence I wrote would have been better stated: “I now treat all inspired guidance as something that may or may not strike a chord with me, not instructions in which I have to find every word applicable.”
DaveW – your question: “But with a patriarchal blessing if it doesn’t apply to the recipient, then who is it possibly for? What other meaning can it have?”
It doesn’t apply to anyone. That was just the patriarch’s opinion and boilerplate and it’s fluffy nothing. I don’t find any meaning in it and no one else does either.
When I was writing this post, I was thinking about a Gospel Doctrine lesson I taught years ago about Jonah. God sent Jonah to Ninevah, and Jonah noped out of that and got on a ship heading to Tarshish, in the opposite direction. A great storm arose (because Jonah did not have free agency to reject his mission call) and the sailors were desperately trying to find a way to appease God and stop the storm.
In an effort to find out who caused the storm, the sailors cast lots: “And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.”
I told this part of the story as a joke. Ha ha! Those superstitious sailors thinking they could draw straws to find out why God sent such a big storm! Ha ha! But of course, casting lots identified the scriptural reason for the storm. Jonah. I then talked about how God meets us where we’re at when we need guidance. I’m not going to get guidance by casting lots because I don’t believe in it. But when I believed in my patriarchal blessing and needed guidance, that’s what God used to reach me.
The point was that we shouldn’t be judgmental about the methods by which other people receive personal revelation.
Incidentally, in the story about Jonah, Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard, and at first they wouldn’t do it. “And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.”
It wasn’t until they honestly thought they were going to die in the storm that they prayed for forgiveness and then threw Jonah into the sea. I liked that point that the sailors tried to save Jonah’s life, even though they knew (and Jonah agreed) it was his fault that God sent the storm.
Janey: Your point that God can reach people in ways we (especially in Mormonism) might find unusual or even blasphemous is important.
My brother says that God found him while he was drunk, alone, and feeling suicidal in a bar – it wasn’t some internal epiphany he had, but another older, wiser man who sat down to talk and drink with him. After a long talk, this man convinced him that he’d wouldn’t find what he was looking for at the bottom of a bottle and that he should maybe try giving God another chance.
It was a years long road after that, but to this day he credits that man buying him a drink and taking time to listen that prompted him to look for a different path.
It could be a patriarchal blessing that gives you the spiritual guidance you need…it could also be an old man in a bar, or it could be a Baptist preacher on a bus in Provo Utah (like it was for me).
I find it interesting that the next generation (our kids and younger) don’t seem to be as invested in getting their PB. Only one of my 3 did, and I don’t think she was very impressed.
I have a much older relative whose PB says the Savior will return before she dies, which both gives her comfort and skews her thinking in some not helpful ways, IMO, but she believes it as a fact. I have never had the heart to tell her that many many early Saints had the exact same promise in their blessing and they’ve been dead for decades or longer.
Pirate Priest, your experience with being told to study languages is fascinating! I had a patriarch who told me the same thing. Except I really didn’t like studying languages, so I just felt guilty about it for years. When I went on a mission, I checked the box saying that I was *not* interested in learning another language. And I was sent to an English-speaking mission. And I felt more guilty. It took years and a real shift in belief for me to let go of my guilt over that for having somehow let God down.
I understand that I am late to the conversation, but my experience with my PB was mostly positive. As I had been counseled, I had a set of questions that I wanted to be answered in the blessing. It was more obvious at the time, but you can still see by reading it that the patriarch started to end the blessing several times, but there were still questions that hadn’t been addressed, so he started it up again. By the time he got to my last question, he was done, and addressed it as part of his closing.
There are a few things he got wrong, but overall I still believe he was guided while giving me the blessing.
I saw enough in the obituary of my patriarch to conclude that he recycled elements of his own PB as language that was in mine 50 years later.
For my daughter, she is very strong-willed and the PB she got in a student stake in Orem was very generic with several mentions of her “determination.”
I believe in promptings or probably just gut feelings that help us treat each other with love when we are in the mindset to do so. If the Jaredites and Lamanites were real, this has not yet been revealed to me.
Fun note – I’m in the middle of a six-day trip in Missouri; headed out to see some Church sites today.
Does anyone else know people who have a lot of children because both parents’ PBs mention sons and daughters, while each baby born just cemented the gender lopsidedness? The family I know who did that were explicit about it.
My dad’s patriarchal blessing says he will be the father of many sons. He has 4 daughters. Perhaps it refers to his grandchildren?
I’ve experienced being present at 4 patriarchal blessings. Mine and my 3 children. All great experiences. However, being at the blessing of my first born was a pierce-the-veil type moment. There was no other way to explain it. The experience surprised me.
The heavenly influence in the room was so palpable, I’ve always said (at least to myself), if anyone was present in that room at the time, it would erase any doubt that we have a loving Heavenly Father who knows us most intimately. There weren’t crazy promises made to him or anything, but it was very clear that God knew him perfectly. Maybe that is what patriarchal blessings are more for–to let us feel in an undeniable way that we are known and loved by God himself.
My blessing said that my posterity would be a blessing to me “all the days of my life.” I remember reflecting on that often with my colicky newborn firstborn and feeling it was a bald-faced lie.
I was assured I would marry, something that meant a lot to my homely, lonely young adult self. It said my husband would “choose me.” Oddly, my husband used this exact phrasing when we were dating: “I choose you.” Did I subconsciously accept his proposal because of this, self-fulfilling the prophecy? I’ll never know.
My dad’s PB reportedly says he’ll never be hurt in a car crash. For years I white-knuckled it in the car when he drove, doing senselessly dangerous things like driving in the wrong lane around a blind curve. Finally, at 80, he was hit by another car — surprisingly through no fault of his own. Years later he hasn’t recovered. It wasn’t his crash that made me question my faith in PBs, tho. It was that he went so long WITHOUT getting into one while driving so recklessly, seemingly proving his righteousness to himself, as evidenced by God’s protection. In reality, he’s an abusive #%!. I was told that some of my siblings’ PBs say they have “goodly parents,” and that threw me. My parents were active in the church, but to call my dad “goodly” was a bit of a stretch, to me. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Our stake patriarch was invited to come speak to the youth and their parents in my ward a few years back. The gist of his talk was that declaration of lineage was the most important part. I suspect this stems from him wrestling with the fallibility of making prophetic declarations in a blessing. I can respect that, because some patriarchs don’t get it. At the same time I find it weird that we would put so much value on the lineage thing, which I regard as a cultural artifact of the era when the church was founded. The notion that one’s lineage has spiritual significance pervades the restoration scriptures, but I don’t believe in the idea at all. I think we as a church are slowly leaving that idea behind, and most members don’t appreciate the extent to which it still exists in scriptures and practices. But we’re stuck with needing a justification for this tradition of patriarchal blessings that we’ve kept, so lineage it is, I guess.
My patriarchal blessing was also “too long” for a laminated card, so I didn’t join in that particular MTC tradition. I once overheard in the hallway at church someone advising a person about to meet with the bishop about getting a blessing that she should memorize it. I haven’t tried that either; too long and all. But clearly the idea persists that the words should be ready at hand.
Despite my present-day skepticism about the degree to which any human possesses real prophetic gifts, I have to admit that my blessing did contain some surprisingly accurate details that I don’t know how to explain. There are other parts that could be read as being about a church leadership career, but I’m definitely not on track for any of that at this stage of my life. I’m now well aware that many people had blessings that were way off the mark in certain ways. I now regard my blessing as a good thing to have as a young adult finding my way in the world, an artifact of a time when my beliefs were more literalistic and orthodox, that I look back on with good memories, but which I’ve not looked at in a decade or two. I know not everyone can feel as good about theirs, so I consider myself fortunate.