[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Cleaning House

On Friday I cleaned house. Not the whole house, of course, just the 
upstairs -- the kid's two rooms are his business (thank God!) and the rec 
room is only used for storage. But I tidied and dusted and vacuumed and 
swept and scoured and wiped and generally made the place entirely fit to be 
seen, for the first time in I-dunno-how-many weeks, but let's not enquire 
too closely.

I did this because I had been roped into billeting two young women who were 
attending the Ontario Youth Parliament, a get-together for college-aged 
students from across the populated belt of Ontario, and sometimes even from 
Thunder Bay.  Young Sheila, from my choir's alto section, didn't exactly 
strong-arm me, but she really needed billets.  And so I obliged.

I visualized my billetees as girls from households in which this 
vacuuming-dusting-tidying thing happens on a weekly basis.  I visualized 
(as I always do) a household in which neatness and order are the rule, 
bills get paid on the dot (with proper accounts being kept), furnace and 
car maintenance happen on schedule, and the fridge and stove are pristine. 
This household isn't conflict-free (hey, I'm not *that* unrealistic!) but 
it is happy and loving, and the people in it are basically well-balanced 
and good. Here, there is not much muddle or confusion, and any unhappiness 
is merely temporary.  Kids' rooms are at worst a bit unruly, and the kids 
pull down good grades, have all sorts of outside activities, and get good 
summer jobs.  The household adults mostly enjoy their work and have saved 
for a happy retirement.  (And yes, I actually do know people like 
this.  Not many, but some.)

I look at this hypothetical household and then at my own, and I get 
discouraged. Of course I don't look at households messier or more muddled 
than my own -- that would be being judgmental, no? -- but I can't find 
excuses, much less reasons, why my life isn't like that orderly, pleasant 
one.  I mean, really. All sorts of people can manage to hold it all 
together. What's wrong with me?

And that's just holding my housekeeping up against someone else's. What 
about the state of my soul? The criteria are simple and clear: You shall 
love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, 
and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Let's not go there. Too scary. I can barely manage this love-stuff with my 
children; how on earth could I manage with everyone else? Doesn't that mean 
that people could run roughshod all over me, take advantage of me, steal my 
time and energy? Doesn't that mean giving and giving without ever 
receiving, meeting everyone else's needs without getting your own needs 
met? Oh, I know there are people like that: the Jean Vaniers and Mother 
Teresas of this world. Next to them, my spiritual housekeeping looks 
downright squalid.

Lent is supposed to be about penitence, but I don't know that my attitude 
toward my housekeeping (physical or spiritual) is really properly penitent, 
because penitence involves metanoia -- making a real change in direction. I 
may attack the housekeeping because I fear the unspoken judgment of a 
couple of properly raised young women, but most of the time, I don't 
actually change the way I operate; I just live with the domestic guilts. I 
make sporadic efforts to become more spiritually disciplined, but they 
rarely last long.  I've long since given up on trying to love everyone 
within range because that just got me into trouble. I'm not sure that I'm 
much better at love than I am at vacuuming.

What rarely occurs to me is that objectively, my house may not be 
meticulous, but it's really not bad; getting it into fit-for-the-public 
state only took me a couple of hours. It does not occur to me to give 
myself credit for daily clean dishes and decent meals and caught-up 
laundry. It does not occur to me that I do, in fact, love *some* people 
reasonably well and I do my best to be charitable and well-intentioned in 
general.  Even if I do have the occasion vengeful fantasy, I don't act 
thereupon. And the bills do get paid, eventually.

Lent isn't entirely for penitence; it's for realism. I am never going to be 
a meticulous housekeeper, but neither is the joint squalid. I am never 
going to be as wise and loving as Jean Vanier, but I can hold someone's 
emotional hand when that's needed. I am never going to live up to God's 
standards, but God knows that, and why, and God's eyes are full not just of 
justice -- real justice, which takes all factors into account and weighs 
our merits and offenses -- but also of deep mercy and love.

So, with these reflections twirling gently through my head, I went downtown 
to pick up my billetees. No girls, they told me; there'd been a mix-up. Two 
guys. Guys in their very late teens or early twenties. With rare 
exceptions, guys at this age wouldn't notice if there were dust rhinos 
thundering through the halls.

Oh well.  At least the house is clean.

The judgment godlet sitting on my shoulder, who focuses so severely on my 
shortcomings (because at least that's better than focusing on everyone 
else's) is just that -- a godlet. Not God.



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