[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Mood

My dear friend Richard (hi Richard!) pinned me to the cyber-wall a 
couple-three weeks ago, pointing out that my waffling about what I should 
do for a living wasn't, in fact, mere waffling.  The old bootstrap 
therapies aren't working, he wrote with loving sternness; "you are at sea." 
And he made a simple suggestion: antidepressants. I've tried them before, 
but they'd made my gastrointestinal system intolerably grumpy, so I'd given 
up on them. Okay, Richard, we'll try again. I still had half a 
prescription. I called my doctor and set up an appointment and started 
faithfully popping one pink-and-grey capsule a day with my morning oatmeal.

This time, my GI system appears to have made its peace, or at least a 
truce, with the medication, but my mood hadn't. I'd forgotten, until 
yesterday, that one quite normal consequence of taking SSRIs is that you 
feel a lot worse before you feel better. Okay: that explains the sense of 
being wrapped in greyish damp-chilly cotton wool, a deep and pervasive 
gloom that stretches like an ill-defined but sticky webbing, reaching back 
in melancholy time and out into the ominous future, bleagh. Right. This is 
supposed to happen. It means the stuff is actually *working*.

In times like this, the practicing Christian is advised to turn to her 
Bible for comfort, and especially to the Gospels. So I cracked my old and 
battered paperback NRSV, the one with a very wise Pogo cartoon permanently 
enshrined in  the nether reaches of the lesser prophets, and looked for 
comfortable words. And of course what I got was Jesus ripping strips of the 
scribes and Pharisees. Oh, thanks. Just what I needed. I flipped around a 
bit and read of the forthcoming destruction of the Temple and times of 
tribulation and woe and all that. Some Christians seem to be able to scan 
the Gospels and take enormous joy and comfort in what they read; they fish 
those waters for the love of God and dredge it up by the shining, straining 
netload. I'm jealous; whenever I try, I always seem to fetch up with the 
slap-up-the-side-of-the-head passages.

But even in the Slough of venlafaxine-hydrochloride-enhanced Despond, my 
mind works theologically. It's a knack, like being able to curl one's 
tongue backward or balance on one foot for a minute at a time.  It may very 
well be that I'm getting the SUTSOTH passages because that's what I'm 
readiest to see. That's what I'm expecting. I expect to be classed with the 
harsh and unforgiving oppressors instead of with the oppressed, with the 
wolves instead of the beloved lambs, and therefore I am expecting a God 
who's persistently pissed off. If so, maybe I need to figure out where that 
particular God-of-my-imagination is coming from. Maybe I expect Jesus to be 
a harsh figure, pointing an accusatory finger at my own unforgiven hurts, 
not the tender shepherd or the faithful friend. Maybe I have trouble 
hearing love because for me it's been so problematic.  Maybe the deep anger 
I hear in the Gospel is my own. .

Theologically, I know that penitence shouldn't, in fact, be like this 
mood-dip, a further wallowing in misery. The moment at which we turn into 
the light of God's inseeing love, the moment we realize how flawed and 
imperfect we are, is the self-same moment at which we discover God's love, 
grace and forgiveness -- at least in theory, although I am by no means the 
only person who tends instead to wallow.  I know that the anger Jesus 
expresses in the Gospels is anger at whatever or whoever blocks God's love 
from the tender, vulnerable soul, not at those who struggle with their own 
sense of unworthiness. Jesus is protecting, not judging, those of us whose 
experience leaves us with deep and complicated scars to our own faith and 
forgiveness. He wants our healing, redemption, and reconciliation, not our 
being cast out into the darkness. I *know* all this. Nonetheless, I have 
always the same problem: getting that knowledge down past my larynx, 
especially at 5:30 in the morning, when the sirens singing of despair are 
particularly fetching.

But. You go on. You put one foot in front of the other, because that's what 
needs to be done. I look out on a sunny late-mud-season day; the tulips are 
up, and scilla and crocii are already blooming, and soon it will be mild 
enough to hang the laundry out. The air is full of mating-season birds and 
the geese are back. Whatever my struggles with the Word as written, the 
Word as created is still, as always, a comfortable Word. Not just in the 
new "nice" sense of the word, but in the old: cum + fortis, to be 
strong-with, to strengthen. Gerard's Herball says that clove gilliflower 
"doth wonderfully comfort the Heart" -- meaning not that it makes you feel 
better emotionally, but that it's a cardiac tonic.

I have to trust that sooner or later the pills will indeed "wonderfully 
comfort" my mood and will help me get back energy, direction, and 
hopefulness.  In time I will be able to scan the Word and hear the 
comfortable (in both sense) words. Meanwhile, I'm going to get my hair cut 
and wallow for a blessed half-hour in Debbie's unfailing love, and tomorrow 
there's church -- singing is always, always good for my soul.  I'll look 
out for gleaming light on the water and listen for the croon of mourning 
doves and do my level best to trust that "all will be well, and all will be 
well, and all manner of things will be well". For real, I hope and trust, 
and not just in the Life to Come.

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

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