From lupa at kos.net  Sat Feb  4 15:45:59 2006
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sat Feb  4 15:46:08 2006
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing (sort of!)
Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20060204102325.01bf9ec0@post.kos.net>

Kat

My apologies for not posting a Sabbath Blessing last week; I was busy with 
something more important. I was acquiring a teenaged daughter. She isn't 
literally mine, of course, but she's mine for the duration.

This is my third "other" daughter. The oldest one is in Halifax and has 
made me an associate grandmother, but I don't hear from her (hi, 
Margaret!). The second one (hi, Georgiana!) comes over for dinner, usually 
twice a week, often bringing her laundry. The third one, Katrina, now has 
the bedroom next to mine, where she is currently curled up asleep, with 
feline _obbligato_.

Never mind the circumstances.  She needs to be here, and she is a blessing 
to us, although all the required physical and emotional adaptations are a 
little tiring for all of us.  The family motto has become "we'll deal". 
I've brought up sons. I've never had a daughter in the house, much less a 
daughter with a very difficult past. Fortunately, this one is bright, 
strong, and resilient and she is learning to advocate for herself.

A friend (hi, Becky!) put it beautifully on Thursday, saying "You can't 
save everyone, but you can help the ones God puts on your doorstep." That, 
it seems to me, is the whole point. I can't rescue every teenager from a 
troubled background; I can't even help most of these kids in my town. I 
haven't the resources and I'd burn out fast. I can advocate for them; I can 
get up on my soapbox and yell at society, "Listen up, folks! These kids 
need your help!" and I will do that as long as I can set finger to 
keyboard.  It's insane when we have enormous wealth and desperate 
deprivation in the same city, but we do. It takes a particular willful 
blindness and a self-centredness that must make God wince to let children 
go to hell in a handbasket, but we do that.  We pour out our help for 
tsunami victims, and that's a good thing, but what about the 20% of Ontario 
children who live below the poverty line? Katrina has spent most of her 16 
years in that place, and it's marked her.

You can't walk around this city and not see what poverty and class 
distinctions do to people, especially the pinched, sharp, look on young 
men's faces. I called a dentist to see if he'd see Katrina, who will be 
getting social assistance, and his receptionist's voice took a cold, 
just-this-side-of-rude tone: there are special rules for welfare patients, 
and she made those very clear, crisply and without friendliness. Okay, in 
that case, the hell with it; I'm not going to have this kid exposed to that 
sort of discrimination for a measly $400 a year, which is all she can get 
in dental benefits. I began to understand the sharp, defiant, 
counterproductive angry pride that I've encountered among some of the poor, 
their sensitivity to being disrespected. It isn't productive, but it's 
understandable. Maybe one of the many reasons this child is in my life is 
to help me with that sort of understanding.

Katrina is here because that is the only possible right choice for her 
right now. She needs safety and love and unconditional acceptance, and we 
can muster those things for her. She needs "other" mothering, and I am 
likely a better "other" mother than I am a "real" mother, and I'm good at 
the latter. But if I'm a little spacy for the next few weeks, you know why. 
Keep us all in your prayers.



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

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


From lupa at kos.net  Sat Feb 11 15:32:44 2006
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sat Feb 11 16:28:45 2006
Subject: [SB] sabbath-blessing
Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20060211100218.01af4020@post.kos.net>

House-Crud

I keep falling into mini-pits of utter exhaustion, but bit by bit, the 
house is coming along.

We moved in three years ago, less a week, more or less; we got the 
renovations done and ourselves more or less unpacked -- and then things 
stalled. Too much other stuff going on, much of it emotionally difficult. 
Over three years, if you don't stay on top of it (and I rarely do), what I 
can only call house-crud builds up. We used the downstairs big room 
casually as a sort of dumping ground for things I couldn't bring myself to 
get rid of. My younger son's two downstairs rooms sank first into disorder, 
then into (I have to say it!) complete squalor. One of the upstairs 
bedrooms held the TV, a grotty couch, my older son's futon bed, and the 
collection of paperwork that I could not bring myself to look at. Unless 
you're a neat freak, you probably know what I mean.

Kat's arrival two weeks ago precipitated a very badly needed upheaval. We 
needed that upstairs bedroom for her, so the grotty couch got the heave. We 
needed a downstairs bedroom for my older son's visits home, so the two 
downstairs bedrooms had to be blasted out. We haven't exactly fully tackled 
the rec room, but there is much, much less stuff in it than there was. The 
Salvation Army's stash has been greatly enriched. The little sofa in my 
office is now Kat's, as is an old dresser. The place is still a bit of a 
mess, but it's a *promising* mess. I've promised myself that we're going to 
chew away at this project with an expected completion date of March 1, at 
which time I want the place to be tidy and clean.

At the same time, it came to my attention this week that there are still 
lumps of what I can only call soul-crud that likewise have to be addressed. 
Two of them are things I'm not willing to go public about, but the third is 
anger.

Long, long ago, I took the decision that I want to stand with the poor: 
that that was the one right thing to do. I turned my back on my own 
slightly-upper-middle class privilege; I worked as a clerk typist. I worked 
as a fishmonger (happy memories there). I shopped down-market. I try always 
to look at the faces of the poor with the love that Jesus would have shown 
to them., and I try to proclaim the call of social justice for all God's 
children.  I don't do it right, but I do try. This isn't anything I can 
claim credit for; it's simply doing the Gospel as is my simple duty as a 
follower of the Christ.

What I learned this week, though, is that around this issue, I have some 
very hot buttons about wealth and privilege and the privileged's tolerance 
of the existence of an underclass. Instead of tackling the class-crud in 
our society, we tolerate it, just as I tolerated my house-crud because 
dealing with it looked too difficult. As I'd let things slide because I 
couldn't face the prospect of tidying up, so has the society I'm living in; 
we've made pain-avoidant choices of which we're now seeing the fruits, and 
they are not pretty.

But I can't point fingers, because I've done the same. I haven't tackled my 
own soul-crud propensity for self-righteous indignation, and it got off its 
leash last week and almost bit someone who didn't deserve to be bitten. 
(Fortunately, a dear friend gave me an appropriate noogie and I got the 
beast back on its lead again.) In church on Thursday, I had real confession 
to make.  The  Sin of Anger is the favourite of the Seven Deadlies for 
idealists, and I am one.

I'm pretty good at Sloth too, looking at the stack of paperwork that sends 
me into anxiety attacks. But this too has to be tackled. Kat can help; she 
doesn't mind paperwork at all, and maybe it's something we can do jointly, 
a little at a time. Metanoia is rarely a one-time thing; it's a matter of 
changing habits, a bit at a time, until the crud's been cleaned up and 
you've set your course in the direction God desires.

Meanwhile, I'm admiring the carpet in my office. It was under there all 
along. There's still stuff that needs to be put away, but nothing I can't 
manage in under ten minutes.



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

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


From lupa at kos.net  Sat Feb 18 16:30:37 2006
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sat Feb 18 16:31:15 2006
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20060218101742.029fc640@post.kos.net>

Les Barricades Mysterieux

It's a brief rondeau for keyboard by the French composer Couperin, a noodly 
little piece that always reminds me of the croodling of pigeons. It rocks 
back and forth between left and right hand, a rhythm akin to spinning or 
kneading bread. When I had a piano, I tried to learn it, discovering that 
it's written in two flats and scored entirely in the bass clef. I 
discovered too, by exploring it (however poorly), that underneath its 
apparent placidity, there is a great deal of profound and truth-filled 
emotion. But I am not a pianist; I never could get it right. Now I listen 
to Angela Hewitt getting it very right indeed, on a CD full of brief pieces 
by Couperin, all of them apparently placid and cheerful, all (on closer 
inspection) also filled with truth and emotion.

I try not to listen to it too often, much less often than I'd like to, 
because I find that if I listen to it frequently, I seem to lose it. My 
attention wanders away from it; it's become too familiar. I'm not living in 
the moment with it. The deep, faithful bass notes no longer surprise me, 
because my ear has gotten too accustomed to them. It can be a problem, with 
something you love but maybe see a little too much of.

This was the reason why, for years, churches celebrated the Eucharist only 
rarely -- four times a year in some periods, once a month in others. The 
fear was that if people experienced it too often, they'd get used to it; 
they'd take it for granted. It would become routine, ho-hum. And in fact, 
when I was younger, that did sometimes happen. The words would wash over 
me, leaving me cool and a little bored. I'd heard them too often. The story 
lacked any surprises.

But something changed, I'm not quite sure when, but a while ago. It's 
partly a matter of attentiveness, partly some sort of soul-change for which 
I can't claim responsibility. I find now that I can (almost always) manage 
to be newly attentive each time to the story: the breaking of bread, the 
sharing of wine, the moment of suffering and redemption. I can stay with 
the words, giving them real and appropriate honour, being in the moment 
with them. Not absolutely always, but often enough.

I remember that when my father was struck down by a brain bleed, I had a 
moment of acute mourning for him: he would never again be able to say the 
words of consecration, hold up the Host and then break it. His physical 
death took three months and a bit longer, but that death was the one I felt 
most acutely for him.  He could not be in that moment again, at least not 
in the same way. Maybe he'd find other moments to be in, but not that one, 
ever again.

But there's also anticipated joy: when we stand in God's presence, grace 
will be always new, always startling, always freshly delightful. I don't 
think we'll ever take it for granted or become deaf to it -- although who 
knows? maybe we'll learn to take basic grace completely for granted and 
move on to new and fresh experiences of grace, as though Couperin had 
composed infinite numbers of new rondeaux of ever greater beauty. It 
doesn't have to be either/or; it could be both/and. I may find myself being 
flabbergasted ever afresh by the mere fact of grace, and yet also move from 
experience to experience, wandering through grace-gardens of immense 
variety and singular delight.

In the meantime, I'll try to be attentive as best I can to the grace I find 
around me, the Eucharist and this little piece of music included.





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

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


From lupa at kos.net  Sat Feb 25 20:29:02 2006
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sat Feb 25 22:05:38 2006
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20060225132620.028e5060@post.kos.net>

The Bundle

It's fascinating, having a roommate -- because that's what Katrina is, 
really. We're not related; we don't share the same expectations or habits. 
Our assumptions about the world are different. It's okay, though, because 
one of the cultural expectations of this household is that differences 
aren't wrong, just different. Yes, we have our ways of doing things, but 
when they're different from Kat's, it's not "do it our way" but "is this 
the way we should be doing things?" The answer is sometimes yes: this 
household puts much more emphasis on recycling and environmental issues 
than Kat is used to. Sometimes the answer is no: CBC FM does not have to be 
the only radio station played in this house. Yes, there is a reason why I 
load the dishwasher this way; no, there's nothing wrong with watching TV on 
Saturday afternoon just because I never do it.

I'm especially aware of this these days because Kat's arrival has 
catapulted me into reexamining the values I grew up with -- for instance, 
the automatic assumption that every single family member would go straight 
on to university right after high school, and that was that. My kids have 
had to break my tight grasp of that one, finger by finger, and it was hard 
on all of us. Or assumptions about money, prosperity, careers, success: for 
a family that claimed to be profoundly Christian, we were really awfully 
seriously focused on this world's godlets. Or assumptions about 
intelligence and feminine sexuality (you could be bright or attractive, but 
not both). I spent a lot of time in the last week writing out stuff from 
the past, walking around it, kicking the tires, and seeing how stale and 
old and wrong so much of it was.

Don't get me wrong: I like custom and tradition as well as the next 
Anglican. But I'm also aware that our ancestors handed us down a package of 
very mixed goods including both Christian beliefs and cultural values that, 
in fact, were completely contradictory to the message of the Christ. It's 
been one of the major blessings of the collapse of old Christendom that we 
can now open that package and sort out the contents. God tells us to trust 
in God's providence for us; culture says "make sure you're all set for a 
comfy retirement". God says "I came to sit with the most beaten-up and 
despised of this world"; culture teaches us "devil takes the hindmost". And 
up until a generation or so ago, parent handed the whole belief-package to 
child and child passed it on to grandchild, without anyone questioning its 
inherent rightness or paying much heed to the rampant inconsistencies. If 
some child in the crowd pointed out the problem, we'd shrug and say, 
"Christianity is all very well and good, but we have to live in *this* world."

Well, yes we do, and no we don't.

It's been a good exercise, unpacking the parcel my own parents handed me 
and examining the contents, holding the Christian stuff in one hand and the 
world stuff in the other, rather like matching socks. "Take responsibility 
for your own actions": yes, that's a good one, matches Christ's call for 
self-awareness and repentance.  "God helps those who help themselves" -- 
wait a minute, that's not an evangelist, it's Benjamin Franklin.  "You must 
come to terms with what's hurt you and struggle towards forgiveness": yup, 
there's a Gospel match.  "If you're intelligent, there's no excuse for your 
not getting straight As" -- nope, no match. I found myself at the end with 
a satisfactory number of matched socks, but also with a fair number of 
mateless ones: in one pile, beliefs that had no real Christian root but 
were simply upper-middle WASP traditions, handed down unexamined, and in 
the other some Gospel stuff that lacked a cultural equivalent, like "love 
your enemy" and "give all to the poor".

But I had to be pushed into opening the parcel in the first place, 
something Kat's presence forced me to do. One problem with parcels like 
this is that up until fairly recently, we weren't supposed to examine them. 
We still aren't, in some church cultures. It never fails to astonish me 
that there are denominations out there in which our duty to the poor isn't 
part of the package at all, whereas "family values" -- which have very 
little Gospel support -- occupy an  enormous amount of space. It's a case 
in which people have simply passed the bundle without taking a serious look 
at what it contains. Likewise, there are parishes that worship the music, 
or the building, or the rector, or the collective long-standing 
dysfunctional patterns; nobody's questioned whether or not these objects of 
adoration should really be sitting in God's spot, because the parish has 
simply passed the bundle, unquestioned.

It explains why people can do something that's been driving me nuts for 
years: sit in the pews, week after week after week, without apparently 
taking any of this Godstuff in. If Mr. Horsenbach's hereditary parcel tells 
him that people who pay their bills and their taxes, keep their lawns 
mowed, go to church regularly, and don't get in trouble with the law are 
good people, then Mr. Horsenbach *knows* that he's a good person. Calls to 
repentance are going to sail right past him because he's met a defined 
standard for goodness, and the calls are to sinners, of which he is not 
one.   The fact that he's slandering the parish priest to the bishop is not 
on his "no-go" list and is therefore not sinful; it is, in fact, righteous 
behaviour because the priest isn't looking after the rectory lawn and 
*that's* sin.

But if we open our hereditary parcels and look, *really* look, at the 
contents, we're free to do some extremely hard and useful work. We're able 
to say "No, I don't have to fit this pattern, and I don't have to pass it 
along." We're liberated to take the Gospel seriously and see how far we can 
run with it, instead of assuming it's only there for decorative 
purposes.  We might find healing for old wounds, when unquestioned 
traditions were destructive. We might find new ways of being, fresh 
pathways to explore. We may choose to retain, or to discard, whatever isn't 
Gospel-mated, depending on how well it works. We may keep old songs and 
write some new ones and set others aside for someone else to sing. But the 
essential thing is that we'll have gone through the parcel with a loving 
but critical eye and come out with something that's now *ours*.

I plan to pass this model along to my kids. It's a tradition I think I'd 
like to hand down to them, one that they can open and explore, about which 
they can make their own decisions. I could leave them worse things.


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

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


