[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

A day late, because I went to the Religious Bookseller's Trade Exhibition 
(RBTE) in St. Charles, Illinois, which was a BLAST. _White China_ was doing 
well there. If you've got the book and would like to review it on 
Amazon.com, that would be a big help. Thanks --

Molly
apologizing in advance for the last line of this piece


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Car Wash

Given bird poop, cat paw marks, close encounters of the insect kind, and 
general road dust, it was clearly time for Sophronia (my beloved Nissan 
Sentra) to have a bath.  So I took her over to the Canadian Tire station on 
Bath Road, gassed her up (the car wash is cheaper that way), paid for a 
wash, and headed over to get her scrubbed down.

Now, I know of only two types of car wash; there may, of course, be more, 
but I haven't encountered them. In type 1, there's a metal frame that moves 
around the car with jets that spray water and soap over the car, pound it 
with high-power spray, and spritz a gentle rinse. Nothing touches the car 
but water. In type 2, the washing apparatus involves huge soft brushes and 
long floppy cloth strips that move alongside and over the car, back and 
forth, gently scrubbing and slapping the car into cleanliness.

I'd forgotten that the Canadian Tire car wash is type 1, the touchless sort.

Dang.

I enjoy the soft brushes and floppy cloth strips. I like the mild _frisson_ 
one feels as they advance upon the windshield like the tentacles of some 
huge, weird but friendly animal. I have fond memories of letting a 
five-year-old sit on my lap and pretend to steer, both of us shuddering 
deliciously as the monster moved toward us. I like the sound of the 
rhythmic soft slaps of the cloth strips, the back-and-forth of the brushes 
as they move from front to back and back to front. There was none of that 
here: just the clinical steel frame and pure water. No fun.  No doubt it's 
better for the car's finish or something like that, but it's no *fun*.

I thought about this as the frame did its rigid little right-angled 
Prussian dance around the car. I hoped, a little maliciously, that it would 
fail to get that bit of bug from the lower left corner of the windshield; I 
misdoubted its ability to pick off the pigeon poop from the rear 
passenger-side door. I wanted brushes and floppy cloth. I wanted the 
friendly monster. I wanted its gentle touch on Sophronia's silvery skin. (I 
don't personify that car, oh nonononono....NOT!)

We need touch.  As infants, if we're adequately fed and diapered but never 
held or touched, we will shrivel up and die. We may come to fear the need 
and want it out of our lives, but it's a human thing.  No, it's an animal 
thing, and it reminds us that we're animals. Chimps groom each other, as do 
cats; horses nuzzle each other and stand flank to flank. Of course not all 
animals do, nor all humans, but I still think this need for touch is pretty 
basic, something along the same lines as the need for chocolate in February.

You'd think, knowing that God knows us, that God would have made provision 
for such a need. And perhaps in ancient times we were better than we now 
are at getting hands-on in loving ways with each other, although human 
nature being what it is, I'm not entirely willing to bet on it.  We always 
seem to believe that somehow there's a Golden Age that we've fallen away 
from, an age full of (say) womanly wisdom and peace and tranquility. I 
invite anyone who believes in this to read _The Iliad_.

My own gut feeling, as always, is that it isn't that simple. The infant 
needs to be held, of  course, but the toddler needs to scramble down from 
the parental lap and go explore. We may need of touch, but don't get within 
30 inches of my person without my permission or I'm going to get antsy. 
(W.H. Auden wrote a lovely little 8-line verse about this.) We crave 
intimacy and at the same time, it scares the bejeezus out of us, 
particularly if we've had any experience of exactly how sour and wounding 
the betrayal of intimacy can be. We may have very significant issues around 
trust and self-revelation. We're push-pulled between the elegant detachment 
of car was type 1 and the friendly floppiness of type 2 -- because who 
knows, maybe the wash monster is *not* friendly?

We have the same push-pull about being close to God. I look sometimes at 
the faces of friends who have (I know) gone through Times that were just as 
Interesting as mine have sometimes been, and I envy the radiant 
God-intimacy I see there. I feel myself a hopeless sinner because try as I 
will, I never seem to be able to trust God completely -- to tumble happily 
into God's loving arms. My head tells me that God is perfectly well aware 
of just how I came to be in a sort of divine car wash of the #1 persuasion, 
and that it wasn't anything I chose -- but my soul whispers back that maybe 
this is just me insisting on being an independent cuss.  And then I have 
coffee with the radiant friends and find that they're struggling just as 
hard as I am, which is something of a comfort.

As Paul notes ruefully, we're always being push-pulled between Godwardness 
and its opposite. God knows this, and God sent Jesus to tell us that God 
knows this and to take this problem on as his own, instead of leaving it.

Still, I wish I could be in a place where God ran soft, friendly, 
floppy  hands-on love all over my grotty and be-bird-pooped soul. 
Theoretically I do stubbornly believe in this. Just sometimes, it's a 
little hard to imagine how it could come to be.

Oh well. It will all come out in the wash.

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.