[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Ten Years

I spent the afternoon at Oxford Mills signing books and remembering. The 
day wasn't the same (Friday, not Saturday), nor the place, exactly (Oxford 
Mills, not Kemptville), and I don't remember what the weather was like that 
long-ago Canada Day, but I fancy it was overcast instead of sunny and 
windy. Doesn't matter. It's all close enough.

I can't remember whether I posted the prayer to the Canadian Anglican 
e-mail list CanAng on the Friday or the Saturday -- on June 30 or on Canada 
Day. I just remember posting a short prayer for my country. And I posted 
another prayer the next Saturday, and the Saturday after that. It seemed 
like a good thing to do. In August, we went off to Nova Scotia for a month, 
and when we came home, I posted something on Saturday again, but this time 
it was a short observation as well as a prayer. Someone said something 
positive, and I liked that. So I posted a slightly longer observation the 
next Saturday.

That fall, I joined another e-mail list, the big uproarious Anglican list, 
and I started posting the Saturday pieces on it as well as on CanAng. I got 
more good feedback. Then, newly single and in tumultuous times, I found 
myself writing stronger pieces; I wanted somehow to winkle out some sense 
from the chaos in which I was twirling, some sense of where God was -- but 
I didn't want to write about the chaos itself. Too personal, too much an 
imposition on others -- I was brought up with very old-fashioned rules. But 
the responses kept coming, not every week, but often enough.

I found a form I could live with and a style: some small thing in my 
ambient universe that seemed likely, plus (usually) some niggly subtext 
derived from the struggles I was in, then some bit of theology played with, 
and finally, a restatement of trust or belief -- just about always that. 
But for the first I-dunno-how-many months (maybe the first year?) I didn't 
save the things. They seemed to me to be unimportant and evanescent: easy 
come, easy go.  It was my friend Allen who dug them out of the CanAng 
archives for me. I don't think I'd ever have thought to do that myself, 
even if I could have found the time or energy.

So, with Allen's nudging, I redid some of the pieces and dumped others and 
put together a manuscript, and Linda Maloney from the CanAng list, an 
editor at the Liturgical Press asked to see the manuscript. LitPress 
accepted the book and it came out in the summer of 1998. I have a copy on 
my desk right by my monitor.

It was ten years ago this weekend that I started writing a Saturday piece. 
I haven't done one every single weekend; there have been times when the 
chaos was so overwhelming that I had to fink out for weeks at a time; and 
there are some weekends when God doesn't hand me anything I can do much 
with, and I have to accept that that's okay. But still, there must be well 
over 350 or so of the little buggers out there somewhere, give or 
take.  Blessed Brian Reid kept track of them for me for years; now I must 
get better at keeping track of them for myself.  (I still tend to see them 
as disposable, I'm afraid.)

Ten years. The writing has shaped my faith, my belief, my life; it's turned 
me inside out, made me far healthier and more whole than I was at the 
outset. Sometimes I hear that a piece has done someone real good, and that 
feels wonderful. Other times -- in fact, most weeks -- I toss something out 
into the ether and don't hear a thing back. That's not a complaint, by the 
way; it's just normal. Someone once said that writing a weekly column is 
like dropping rose petals into the Grand Canyon and listening for the echo. 
Doesn't matter. Even the ones I consider duds or, at best, bunts seem to 
have their use in the great scheme of things.

And then, every now and again -- maybe twice a year if I'm very blessed 
indeed -- something comes flowing through my fingertips that I know I'm not 
responsible for; I'm just doing the word processing, and I am humbly glad 
when that happens. Those are the keepers.

Thank you for reading and responding and forwarding the things around. This 
community means more to me than I can say.

Ten years. I can't believe it's been ten years.

http://spindlegeek.blog-city.com/


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