[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

I'd planned to write this week's SB on the good work being done with and 
for the victims of Katrina -- not just those in New Orleans but those 
elsewhere along the Gulf coast. But I don't always get to pick what I write 
about, and something else got given to me this week. Next week, I hope!
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Haircut

Debbie is, so far as I know, probably the one person in the whole known 
universe who *really* knows how to cut my hair. I have extremely fine, 
quite curly, fly-away hair, with a strong propensity for what a friend of 
mine (thank you, Anne!) calls "the finger-in-the-light-socket look" -- a 
particular problem when you live next to a Great Lake with lots of wind and 
humidity. But I have, through a choir chum and the grace of God, found 
someone who actually knows how to prune my locks. I am unendingly grateful.

And so, once a month, I trundle happily up to Debbie's house. It's a 
half-hour drive through the countryside along a road I'm very fond of, and 
every time I take it, I'm sure I'm going to be late. But I never am. As I 
turn the corner from the driveway to her small salon, I feel the love 
reaching out and surrounding me. For that (as well as the good cut) is what 
Debbie has to offer.

She is a devout and tolerant Christian, one who *really* gets the message 
that it truly is about love. It's not about fear or judgment, or getting 
your theology exactly right, or confronting sin (although that needs to be 
done too sometimes); it's about God's absolute, unending, unconditional 
love, which is eternally there, whether or not we can turn in that 
direction and accept it.

I'd heard the same message from other people, but somehow it all seemed to 
get messed up with emotional neediness and knots-in-the-head and control 
issues and manipulative _quid pro quos_, until I'd begun to believe that 
this Christian love business was something to be deeply leery of.  I'd 
started to sidle into the next aisle of the supermarket when I saw a 
Christian "reaching out in love" to me because I'd been so badly burned.

That was before Debbie got my head over her sink and sudsed my scalp. I 
think it took about 30 seconds for her soul to lock eyes with my soul and 
say "Yippee! It's Molly!" in utter delight.

It's startling, but refreshing, to run into someone who really is doing 
exactly what we're supposed to be doing: extending real love, not because 
you've done anything to earn it but because she's muckled so strongly onto 
God's love and is simply passing it on.  But that's what Debbie does.  To 
her, each person whose hair she deftly snips is a gift from God and utterly 
precious. I never get the sense that she's taking little twinkly glances 
into the mirror and thinking "What a loving person I'm being!" or doing 
this to get love in return -- although I find it impossible not to love her 
right back.  Passing along God's love is a knack she's got, like knowing 
how to cut hair like mine.

Why is this such a hard thing, and so rare? To offer love takes a lot of 
self-confidence, just for starters; it assumes that our love is somehow 
valuable and that others might like to have it, and maybe that's not our 
experience. Maybe we've tried to love people who didn't want or couldn't 
accept our love, and that hurts.  Or we've made love conditional on what 
the other person does, or is, or can be for us, and he or she can't meet 
our needs. Or too much of the love we've received came with too many 
strings attached. Or we've mixed up "love" with the sort of warm-fuzzy 
sentimentality that can't survive a reality-check.  Or we're simply too 
tired and too worn out.  It's hard to find the energy to pass love out when 
your own very real needs aren't getting met, and that's true for so very 
many people.  One way or another, we're wounded and far from grace at times.

Or maybe we've never heard the message in the first place. You can't pass 
on God's love if your god is not loving. Maybe the only god we've been 
offered is a god of judgment and reproof, of triumphalism or revenge -- a 
god whom we beg to stomp the enemy flat. Or we've been handed a god who's 
distant, remote, impassive, allowing hurt to happen according to some 
inscrutable plan. Or maybe the only god we think can save us is the god of 
the common culture, a god of success and prosperity, of popularity and good 
looks -- a god whose "love" (if you want to call it that) is endlessly 
conditional on our being exactly right, by standards none of us can ever 
possibly meet. There are so many gods out there who can come between us and 
God's own steady, unbending love.

And then there are all the things that go into making us up as people: 
biology, disposition, family, experience, culture... It takes so many 
elements working together to produce a loving human being that it's 
surprising it happens at all, much less that it happens as often as it 
does. It's as mysterious and mindboggling as the specialization of stem 
cells as the embryo forms.

But somehow in the Debbies of this world (would that there were more of 
them!) it all comes together, and God smiles. I'm not like her; I lack her 
fearlessness -- for that's really what this is about. I lack the confidence 
that any love I can give is good enough or sufficiently transparent or even 
particularly valuable.  Too many bruises, I suppose, and too many trust 
issues with the God whose love I constantly struggle to feel. But I can at 
least look at Debbie and think "That's where I'm supposed to be headed," 
even if I'm not there yet.

I drive back through the deeply green countryside a little dazed, a little 
lightheaded, but very happy. I feel as though I've been given a long, cold 
drink when I'm thirsty. And my hair looks great.

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

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