Psalm 103:1

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.

Bless
I speak well of. I praise. I lift up. I wish God well, and by extension I love what God loves. I commit to working for God's interest. I connect my own honor to God's honor. I give a gift that I can't take back, and I can't give to another.

the
Not "a", but "the", because there is one Lord. "the", meaning the name requires no further explanation: meaning creation itself, the galaxies, the swirling planets, the oceans, all creatures of every size, and even humankind on some level, innately knows the One of whom I speak.

Lord
YHWH. The name not spoken aloud by the ancient Hebrews, out of reverence, and because it is unpronouncable, ineffable, it can not be defined by any human language or idea, which is why its Hebrew meaning is "I AM", or "I will be who I will be". And yet, a proper name. A first name. A name freely given as a gesture of good will, even though sharing names makes one vulnerable. The name spoken as a lullaby to Moses, a lullaby to a put-down people who so desperately needed to know who it was that could hear them, who hurt for them, who meant to set them free in body and in mind. A name given as the very first step toward becoming Word Made Flesh, incarnate, infinite encased in the finite.

O
Addressing one's very self, both original author and reader. A reminder. A post-it note on the bathroom mirror. A command, by a grasping, flailing, desperately flawed person, to herself, to himself, in yet another attempt at self-control.

my
But is it "my" if it's "me"? Is a soul a possession? And if so, is it really "mine"? Is my heart, my brain, my body "mine", or is it "me"? In the same way, how is my soul "mine"?

soul
The "me" that God will remember, always. The sum, and more, of body, mind, heart. The life. The process that unfolds even now. The story being written word by word, transcribed by the world surrounding me, the wake, the ripples of my thoughts and actions in real time. Never disembodied. Never filtered or idealized. Always my true self in the present moment, warts and all.

and
The soul is first to bless, but there is more. Lest I limit myself, find a loophole in the contract, seek to rein in the gravity of my words of blessing.

all
There it is: not some, not part, not most, not on some date to be determined, not just on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, not the grizzle left over after the minutiae of everyday life has feasted on me. All.

that is
Just as God is "I AM," so existence extends to me, from the ground for being, the first cause, the author of existence itself. The things within me, the dreams and hopes, the envies, the fears, the skin flap on my hip, the cheek cells stuck in the toothpaste stains on my upstairs sink, is, and is because of God. Because God not only is, but happens to have invented is.

within
setting boundaries for personhood, which is tricky. Thoughts are "within", but they result in actions affecting the "without". Emotions are "within", but they build relationships and connect us to others outside ourselves, sometimes others we haven't even met. On the other hand, what I see, hear, taste, feel, smell, is "without," but becomes a memory, a part of my matrix of self. Is there really a "within"? a distinct consciousness, sovereign and set apart from all else, or is it interconnected, inseperable, from the consciousness surrounding me? If so, the part I have command of shall bless the Lord.

me
The singular consciousness. I think, therefore I am, therefore I bless. If any is true, it all is, and if any is lacking, it all unravels. Assuming I exist at all, I bless the Lord.

bless
No longer just the soul. This irreplaceable word, this word that can't be reeled in again, this declaration of loyalty and love, comes from my whole self, at my willing command. All that is within me, my many names and titles, signs the petition, the declaration to announce God's goodness and work for God's good, which is the good of all that bears God's image.

his
...but God is beyond gender. A clunky metaphor; so severely limiting. As if the God who not only birthed all things but envisioned the way biological birth takes place, who has born down with every mother in every labor pain, would know nothing of femininity. And yet, whether "his" or "her", we dare not strip God of personhood, of will, or consciousness. We dare not make God an impassive life force, a complacent law of physics behaving in experimentally repeatable ways through all time and space. God is love, and God loves, which means that God is not an "it" but a loving parent, and the name God has given to us, a handle that we might clumsily grapple with God's mystery, is God's alone, and belongs to no one else.

holy
Other. Alien. Beyond the strangest and most outlandish inkling of human fancy. Set apart for that very reason: because this is a whole other category of being, about which we know precisely nothing. Set apart to be of God, and to be explained to us over the millennia, but never domesticated. Never tamed. Never adapted for network television, or bottled up and sold next to the gift cards at the grocery store. The wild, prodigal, volatile things of God, which make us tremble with fear and with delight.

name.
This is what we bless, because this is what we know. A name. Nothing more. Not because we don't wish we could bless God in Godself, but because we wouldn't know where to begin. So here is the starting point. The name. The statement of being: "I AM". The statement of utter freedom: "I will be what I will be." The statement of solidarity: "I am here, always, with you, for you." The rest, we can not begin to know, to ponder or to bless, apart from the name, "YHWH", whose story is written across history and across our hearts.