[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Anxiety

"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its 
own. Today's trouble is enough for today."

Sarah, my massage-person, is not going to be happy with me when I see her 
Tuesday morning. Anxiety has settled into the muscles over my left 
shoulderblade; I can feel it digging in deeper and deeper, a working 
grumble, reaching up into my neck, making those muscles tight and ropy. 
Come to think of it, there's similar action on the right side. Damn.

I know in my theological head that anxiety is a sin against the Holy 
Spirit; I know (neck up) that I should trust in God to provide what I need. 
The problem is that my body doesn't believe it. My neurotransmitters are 
skeptics, perhaps even agnostics. There's been too much history. I tried so 
hard to trust in God, and kept on trying to trust in God, but things just 
didn't work out -- not God's fault (I keep telling myself and God), just 
the way of this world. Promises, made even in the best of faith, get 
broken; expectations don't get fulfilled. It hurts, and you try to move on 
-- but it makes trust very difficult. And when you've wrapped your hope up 
in Godstuff, it makes trusting in God's good providence a problem.

And then I kick myself yet again for indulging in what my adoptive daughter 
calls "vending machine prayer": put in a prayer and out pops the thing you 
wanted. Doesn't work. Again, my head knows one thing and my shoulders know 
something different.  Again, damn.

So my head did the sensible thing and took the rest of me out for a walk, 
through the brilliance of a late September day. My head noted that the 
grass and trees are still gloriously green; the lake is sparkling and the 
sky is that particularly glorious deep blue that you get only during the 
fall and on some particularly blessed high-winter days. My head speculated 
on the age and geology of a limestone cut and paid good heed to the late 
asters and cornflowers. And slowly, breathed in by the beauty of Creation, 
the message started to think about getting into my shoulders.

I know that, all things being equal, the trees will turn in a couple of 
weeks, and that three of them on Union Street will be especially stunning 
-- pale gold next to deep scarlet next to flame-orange. I know that in 
about three weeks I can go to the conservation area and pick milkweed pods 
and split them and rejoice in their seeds. In six weeks, give or take, we 
should be entering fall Mud Season. Christmas Eve is three months off 
today.  I know that six months from now we will all be completely fed up 
with winter. I know that a year from now the geese will be gathering on the 
rocks by the lake to migrate south. The lake has been here for about 10 
millennia and can reasonably be expected to be still around for some time 
yet. The earth continues to spin and circle, and my life is only a very 
tiny part of it.

But I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.  Tomorrow doesn't exist 
yet.  I'll probably go to church (we have an anthem) but I don't know if 
I'll have coffee with an old friend who may or may not have time for that, 
and if we do have coffee, I don't know how the conversation will turn 
out.  I don't know that the past will determine the future; I don't know 
where my children will be or what they'll be doing next May. Life is both 
predictable and plastic (in the moldable sense), and I must take more care 
to keep those two balanced. My shoulders are holding out for predictable. 
God says plastic.

If God said predictable, the Second Coming would have happened already, and 
it hasn't. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't trust God; it means that the time 
isn't right yet. Shoulders, listen up. Whatever you may believe, my head is 
right on this one.

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

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