[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Calvin

In his three weeks with us, Calvin the black kitten has roughly doubled in 
bulk, like bread dough. He and I still like to pretend, though, that he's 
still little enough to fit into my hand, as he was when he first arrived. 
He particularly likes to be held high up against my chest, his head close 
under my chin, with his hindquarters curled like black velvet on my wrist. 
This puts him in perfect range for patting my face, playing with my hair, 
and trying to eat my earrings.  When he's spent enough time chasing his 
brother around the house and is tired, he'll scramble up my leg and demand 
to be held; he purrs ecstatically for a while and then falls asleep. He is 
utterly trusting -- so trusting that even the vacuum cleaner doesn't spook 
him long.

I hold him, his softness and warm and small weight leaned up against me in 
this perfect trust, and I envy him. Trust is something I never find easy, 
and what little trust I have is too easily defeated when anything goes 
awry. It's hard, sometimes, to regard the future as anything other than a 
trajectory of the past, and when the past has been difficult, things like 
trust and hope can be hard to come by.  And then I shake myself and 
remember how much harder it has been for so many others, people known and 
unknown.

I let my mind range back to the land and time of Jesus' birth: how hard and 
bitter it was for all but a very few, whose power and wealth depended on 
the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the many. The greater the anger 
and despair of the dispossessed, the more passionate their hope for justice 
and the coming of the Messiah, the more brutally they were repressed. 
Mary's song of triumph shines out against a background of terrible darkness 
and turbulence.

And yet into these striving times, God comes "all so still/ where his 
mother lay" -- a newborn, helpless as a blind kitten, as unthinkingly 
trusting in her arms as Calvin is on my hand: a gift. God could at least 
trust these two, the girl and the man, to hold the child, Godself, in 
safety and give him love and care, to raise him well -- and this in a world 
far darker than the one I now inhabit.

Trust isn't foolishness. Later, in his ministry, Jesus would choose his 
words and his occasions, staying out from under the Roman political radar 
long enough to get his message out before turning deliberately into the 
trouble he knew was his to bear.  He chose his fights. But he could operate 
in trust, as his mother and Joseph had before him: the sort of deep trust 
that comes from a faith based as firmly in the heart as it is in the head.

 From head to heart can be the longest journey.... My head says that I am 
held as firmly and lightly in God's love as Calvin is against my shoulder, 
and therefore I should be serene and trust in God's ways of providing. My 
battered heart isn't quite convinced. But I know this is my problem, not 
God's -- mine to work on as best I can.

Meanwhile, Calvin has curled up with his ginger brother Hobbes in a pile of 
sleeping kitten; the house is quiet and big Maggie-cat has emerged from her 
hiding place, wanting reassurance. May I know myself held as Mary held her 
baby, as I hold this kitten, securely and in love.



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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.