[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Send Queued Messages

<Click!> And the status bar at the bottom of my Eudora screen showed them 
going out, four messages, each large enough to take an appreciable amount 
of send-time, even with high speed Internet access. The messages themselves 
were short, just an "Incoming! Duck!" line each. But each had between three 
and five files attached, and some of the files were substantial. There she 
goes, the newest book, back to the publisher.

This is the real putting-the-baby-to-bed part of writing a book.  I spent 
the last couple of weeks combing through the copy-edited files, accepting 
or rejecting (mostly the former) a gazillion tiny changes. Good editing 
gets rid of bad habits, like my overuse of the word "that", my slightly 
peculiar hyphenation, and my tendency to use Fright Caps. Checking and 
making all these changes was fiddly work and dull, but utterly necessary, 
and I was grateful for it. But this was also my final chance to make any 
real changes, and I made a few.

It was odd, reading what I'd written only a few months ago and realizing 
that there are parts with which I now disagree, although mildly -- not 
enough to rewrite the pieces or pull them out, but enough that in a couple 
of years I know I will be quarreling with my former self. I've learned to 
live with this -- I can't really call it a problem, more an ongoing 
condition. It's part of being a writer; you evolve. It's also how I operate 
when I think about Godstuff.

I don't want to get into "two groups of people" thinking, but the fact 
remains that we look to Godtalk for direction *and* for meaning, but people 
being people, we may put more emphasis on the one than on the other. 
Although direction is extremely important to me, my real love is making 
meaning. This is probably part of the same pigheadedly 
individualistic/creative streak that will let me not follow recipes or 
knitting patterns and insists on making everything up from scratch. The 
quality of the results depends on the level of expertise I'm operating at, 
which varies.  I don't see anything wrong with people who follow recipes 
and knitting patterns, and I certainly don't see anything wrong with people 
who are happy to receive and pass along faith traditions and use them to 
guide their lives. I think it's great. It's just not how I'm happiest 
operating.

For this reason, my faith-thinking is on the prowl, constantly taking 
Godstuff in one hand and real life in the other and trying to see how they 
interact. But it's an evolutionary process, depending a whole lot on what's 
going on in my life and (above all) on who is driving me up the wall these 
days.  Irritation is a rich source for theological reflection, especially 
once you accept that the only way to regard the louse in someone else's 
hair is to check your own scalp for nits of the same species.

Re-reading the manuscript as I checked the edit, I could see the process in 
operation, as I can see it whenever I look at something I wrote a while 
ago. The divergence between where I am now and where I was then is still 
small, but it will grow.

This can get scary -- is this stuff mere transient codswallop, after all? 
-- except for two things. First, if that's where I was six months ago, it's 
where someone else is now, and yet another person will be in a year (and 
perhaps you were six months before I was). We journey as companions in this 
pilgrimage, but we're at various stages and seeing different 
landscapes.  Second, I proclaim to the best of my ability the fact that I 
*know* I don't have God taped. I can only make guesses that make sense to me.

But I make my guesses with one ear tuned to the whisper of tradition, not 
just because I'm an Anglican ("change that lightbulb??? My grandmother 
donated that light bulb!") but also because I know I need to be kept on 
course. It's too easy, when you're feeling particularly original and 
creative, to make really dumb mistakes or to re-invent the wheel.  I also 
need to listen to those with whom I don't agree, partly because they too 
are God's beloved and worthy of my respect, but mostly because what they 
say is well worth listening to.

It's an intricate process, trying to figure out how to write God-stuff -- 
how to speak what seems to resonate in Scripture and tradition and real 
life, and to do so in a way that makes sense. I don't get it right all the 
time. When I do get it right, it's usually because I wasn't doing the 
writing, only the word processing. I wish that happened more often.

On to the next book -- this one a fun compilation of knitting stories, but 
another Godstuff book waits just over the new year's horizon. It will be 
the same and different, as life unrolls. That's what writing Godstuff is about.





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