I'm sorry, I've realised that I jist have the spoons to write up our next Gobbolino chapter before I throw myself into the HPST Summer School/Retreat. Instead I'm going to do a quick write up of the HPST Night of BlessingsLiveShow methodology. This weekend, before the summer camp proper begins they did two liveshows for people living in European and Australian Time Zones (because unlike me a lot of people aren't able to turn their lives upside down for a week). I attended the Europe session which was in the early evening for me (lunchtime -ish for the Hosts).

First of all they welcomed us and encouraged us to share (in the text box) our "dungeons and towers" for the week as a check-in and to help us come together in the (virtual) sacred space talked a little about the idea of Blessings (which is discussed further in Casper's book The Power of Ritual - i've finished reading it now and highly recommend it). They spoke about things like Blessing and Sacred Reading Practices as "Spiritual Technologies" which i really liked.

The way the evening worked was that each Host choose a Character from the Harry Potter series who is particularly important to them ( Vanessa choose Molly Weasley and Casper chose Dumbledore) and spoke a little about why they resonate with them (keeping a gently critical eye on their character's flaws).
Then we did a Sacred Imagination on a couple of passage that particularly exemplifies those characters. The passages were read on video clip by "Friends of the Show", slowly and carefully to give us time to fully enguage our imagination but with expression and a touch of humour. It reminded me that reading out loud can be such a great gift.
The Sacred Imagination excecisrs lead the Hosts and then us to bless the characters - similarly to the Blessings I give at the end of each chapter.
We then moved from blessing fictional characters to blessing real people (and creatures and things). Using Gobbolino as an example, after reading I might ve inspired to Bless everybody who is homeless as Gobbolino keeps search for a new place to live. Then focusing in on more specfic resonances to bless LGBT people who are rejected by their family of orgin in the same way that Gobbolino is rejected by Grimalkin, Sootica and the Witch. And moving even more specifically to bless a particular friend who is looking for a new job/career as Gobbolino explores different roles.
Finally we we encouraged to move to blessing ourselves. Again using the example of Gobbolino i can Bless myself for my (existing/ongoing) care of children or in the hope that I will be able to develop some of his optimism and ease in making new friends...

Obviously any online event lacks something compared to in person ones but this had a lovely atmosphere. I always enjoy listening to Vanessa and Casper and I felt for/with the attendees sharing their Blessings in the text box (C&V read a selection out loud, which was useful for accessibility). I'm looking forward to using my reading to inspire more Blessings - and for my act of blessing to inspire changes in my attitude and behaviour even if it doesn't have any more metaphysical benefits for whoever I have Blessed.