[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Squirrel

Woke up this morning with Failure curled up on the pillow next to my head. 
I don't know what my dreams were; I only know that as I woke, my mind went 
trailing back through memories, examining the bright beginnings that didn't 
work out, the things taken up and set down too soon, the broken promises, 
the failed potentials. And the squirrel in my head -- that endlessly 
self-criticizing internal voice, always ready to pipe up -- chittered "No 
excuses."

I do this to myself and it drives the people who love me crazy. From them, 
I have at least learned to remember (though never quickly enough) that the 
squirrel is a liar and a deceiver. But this morning, two things occurred to 
me for the first time.

First, the squirrel is a self-important narcissist with a tendency toward 
kindergarten thinking. It assumes that I'm the only person responsible for 
a given situation when, in fact, that's usually not the case. It assumes 
that sheer determination is all that's needed for success at any given 
task, forgetting that (say) aptitude and interest may also be required. It 
assumes that there's no such thing as luck or circumstance. It assumes that 
there's a bright, shiny standard of Good 'n' Normal against which I am to 
be judged and (inevitably) found wanting.  It listens to the worst 
over-simplifications of this unKingdom world and takes them as gospel truth.

But if those over-simplifications really are true, then what sort of 
failure does that make God? Surely a good and almighty Creator would have 
made a world more conforming to the bright pages of the homemaker's 
magazine? If bright, shiny and successful are indeed the standards we're 
supposed to meet, then Jesus is a failure. Not only did he get himself 
crucified, but he hasn't kept his promise to come back, as yet.

We can take on the blame for God's apparent failure, talking about human 
free will and a fallen Creation. But I can't entirely buy that either. We 
do have to take on the responsibility for our own bad behaviour -- the 
violence we inflict upon each other, the promises we make and break, our 
negligence and selfishness, the vacancy holding love's place.  But to say 
that humankind's rebellion against God is why the world is out of whack -- 
isn't that an act of narcissism too, putting ourselves at the centre of 
things? After all, Creation goes back so many billions of years before we 
were around. The tectonic plates that banged together off Aceh Province 
causing so much human suffering antedate us by millions and millions of 
years.

Or is the problem maybe in our expectations? We declare thus-and-such to be 
success and the other thing to be failure. If your very bright kids don't 
get top-notch grades, it reflects badly not only on them but on you as a 
parent; clearly you must have done something wrong.  It doesn't occur to us 
to question how important top-notch grades are in the great scheme of 
things, or whether this apparent failure might, in fact, be the result of a 
complex interplay of factors, not least of which is the frequent failure of 
schools to engage extremely bright kids.  Taking on the whole guilt for 
this is an act of narcissism.

Who did Jesus choose to stand with? Not, I'd guess, the people in _People_ 
-- not that they're one whit less God-beloved than anyone else.  But Jesus 
stood with the low and the little, the apparently unlucky, those whose 
lives weren't enviable. That says much about how God sees what we see as 
failure. Jesus reminds us that pop culture standards are not God's 
standards. What matters isn't whether we succeed by this world's judgment 
but how we make our own souls and (above all) how we act in relationship 
with God and other people.

Maybe (I tell the squirrel) the problem isn't in my life but in your 
expectations. Maybe I've promised the wrong things, given who I am; maybe 
I've been operating by the wrong standards -- standards I often accepted 
without question. Maybe I've been too afraid to stand up to the world's 
judgment and say "No, I just don't buy that."  Maybe I can't take God's 
very long view and see how it will all play out. Maybe I've forgotten that 
mercy is an integral part of real justice, and so the squirrel -- which has 
no mercy -- is no just judge.

Whatever. I know only that it's a beautiful day, brilliantly sunny and 
scented with lilacs; I am about to hang out two loads of laundry. The house 
is marginally tidier. Yesterday I put two skeins of good-looking homespun 
three-ply yarn aside for washing; I'll ply and skein the third one this 
evening, after supper with two (very bright) young men whom I somehow 
raised to be people of integrity and honour.  It's not so bad.

I open the screen door and toss the squirrel out into the yard. There: go 
play with the other squirrels.



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.