[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Doors

There are a number of Christian phrases that irritate the bejazysus out of 
me: "This must be in God's plan for you," or "count it all joy", or "when 
one door closes, another opens". They irritate me because they seem to deny 
the reality that sometimes gawdawful stuff happens to people who have done 
nothing to deserve it, and cheap comfort is not an adequate response. Cheap 
comfort is walking away from the grief instead of sitting with it patiently 
and companionably while it works its way through, one bit at a time.

That being said, sometimes one door *does* close and another opens -- I 
have to admit that, rather ruefully (good ol' spiritual pride taking a 
small licking there). On Wednesday, I found that I wasn't going to get a 
job I very, very much wanted and would have been good at -- no funds, alas! 
Briefly, my lower lip was out into the next county, especially because my 
potential boss made it exceedingly clear that she was as disappointed as I 
was.

Drat. (Useful word. Needs to be revived.)

But on Thursday, thanks to my agent (hi Linda!), another door opened. It 
looks as though three of my books that I'd consigned to the literary 
graveyard (two out of print, one on permanent hold) may, in fact, be given 
back to me, and that I may be able to put them out in a new way. Another 
writing project that I'd half given up on also looks viable, one that has 
important personal, as well as professional, ramifications. And yet another 
book of my own lurks on the horizon, waiting to be started, this time with 
a strong sense of direction.  My vocational life has got back its purpose. 
I am no longer sitting here spinning in the breeze, wondering how to fill 
my days. It feels *very* good.

And so I am willing to go back to those "cheap comfort" phrases that 
irritate me so, and ask if perhaps I've been looking at them wrong.  I 
still have trouble with "this must be in God's plan for you", because that 
implies that God is a puppet master or clockmaker, a control freak and 
micromanager, inflicting pain and awarding joy deliberately, for whatever 
purpose.  I cannot imagine that God's plans include tsnumais and murderous 
terrorists and babies who die at birth. That God-view died at Auschwitz and 
we've been crawling out from under the corpse for the last 60 years.  The 
God of my believing does not inflict suffering but sits with us and shares it.

What I can believe, however, is that it's in God's will for me to make what 
best I can of my experiences, the bad ones as well as the good ones, to go 
on learning.  Maybe not getting the job I wanted should remind me not to be 
too attached to outcomes. It should remind me not to fall in love with the 
future but to hold hope lightly, cupped in the palm of my hand -- and to go 
on hoping, even when I'm faced with disappointment. There may be funding 
for that job next year, after all.

As for "count it all joy" -- that sends me back to the epistle in 
question.  James writes that trials produce endurance and endurance makes 
the believer mature and complete, and that's where the joy is. It's one of 
those places where context is everything. James says to take the long view, 
and I have no trouble with that. On the other hand, he also writes that 
doubt is out of the question; those who doubt are "double-minded and 
unstable" and mustn't expect anything from God. Well, maybe that's where my 
problem is, because I do struggle with doubt at times. But again, I have 
trouble with a God who doesn't see where my doubt is coming from and who 
can't forgive my frailty.

I keep coming back to the will to believe, the desire to trust: these I can 
always manage. I can choose over and over again to believe that God is 
somehow at work in my life, even if I can't see how, and that for that 
reason, I should take the long view. Maybe a door closes and stays closed; 
it looks, in fact, as though it had been boarded over and nailed shut. Then 
maybe instead of resenting the fact that no new door seems to be anywhere 
in sight, I can trust that somehow, something will present itself when the 
time comes. Not necessarily today, but maybe that's a thing that I can work 
with.

For the moment, I'll rest in a small pool of real and pleasurable hope, and 
it feels good indeed. We'll see how it all turns out.

******************

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