Pierre Pradervand
1937 to 2024
Pierre Pradervand was a Swiss sociologist and writer who made his home in Geneva. He studied in Geneva, in Bern, and at the University of Michigan, and earned his doctorate in sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
He spent his working life on social justice and development, in more than forty countries on five continents. That included years in Africa, where he worked in Senegal with the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker relief organization.
The practice came out of a wound.
In Switzerland, Pierre joined the effort to end world hunger. His employers objected, and one colleague pressed him to choose: drop it, or leave. He left, and the resentment consumed him.
Then he read the words bless those who curse you. So he began blessing the people who had pushed him out. Deliberately. Every day. In every way he could imagine: in their health and their joy, their work and their finances, their families and their peace.
It took years. The resentment turned to joy.
“To bless means to wish unconditionally, total, unrestricted good for others and events from the deepest wellspring in the innermost chamber of your heart.” Pierre Pradervand
Anything can be blessed.
Out of that came The Gentle Art of Blessing, first published in French in 1998 and later translated into several languages, and later 365 Blessings to Heal Myself and the World. He taught that you can bless:
- the day itself, the moment you wake
- the strangers you pass on the street
- your city, its government and its teachers, its nurses and its street sweepers
- the sick, in the wholeness still waiting underneath their suffering
- prisoners, and the ones who have harmed you
- whole nations at war
When war came to Ukraine, he blessed the Ukrainians, the families fleeing, the Russian soldiers, and Vladimir Putin by name. He admitted the blessing seemed contradicted by everything he could see. He blessed anyway.
“It is the intentions of the heart. That is the core of blessing, the intention of the heart, not the words.” Pierre Pradervand
To read him in his own words, visit gentleartofblessing.org, where his blessings for refugees, for people living with depression, for Mother Earth, and for countries at war are collected.
Why this site
You arrive expecting conflict. You receive grace instead.
I keep surprising myself by reading The Gentle Art of Blessing again. Every time, the same thing happens. I stop complaining, because complaining is creating too. It is just creating something nobody really wants.
So I am learning how to see goodness everywhere, and in everyone. How to wish the greatest good from the deepest part of my heart. Genuinely. Without expecting anything in return.
This site is a candle lit from his. It exists so that when someone you love is hurting, or someone has hurt you, or the news is full of bombs, you have somewhere to go that is not a fight. And then you actually send it.
Devon Seegers
Biographical sources: DailyGood, Simon & Schuster, gentleartofblessing.org.