[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Attitude

Some weeks are better than others. I spent this one waiting, not very 
patiently, for promised work to come in (it didn't) and warping a loom in 
the weavers' and spinners' guild room (still haven't got it right). While 
we didn't get clobbered by last week's freak snowstorm, we've been hit with 
cold winds, dark skies, and rain, a generalized gloom instead of the usual 
fall beauty.  The world news has been more than ordinarily depressing. And 
so, in church this morning, I felt some difficulty cultivating an attitude 
of gratitude. Yes, I can count my blessings, starting with my peaceful, 
safe, wealthy-by-world-standards existence, working my way through good 
health and beloved children, remembering the kindness and patience of 
senior weavers, and ending with the excellence of this fall's Mac apples.

But today, it's a head exercise.

Damn.

The theological voice in my head knows better, of course. It can marshall 
all its forces of argument, all the creeds I can say without reservation 
because I do truly believe them. It can reiterate the promise of 
Providence, the belief that God is here, sustaining and upholding me, that 
God's love is real and solid and trustworthy. But today, it feels as though 
God's on one side of a plexiglas window and I am on the other, and God's 
usual reassuring whisper isn't anywhere to be heard.

Instead, today I've got That Other Voice. The voice that notes that God 
doesn't seem to be very busy in the Middle East or Iraq or North Korea -- 
in fact, that highly religious people behave just as badly as the other 
guys. The voice that recollects what some darling Christian folk have 
inflicted on me and mine -- and what I, a self-proclaimed Christian, have 
inflicted on others. The voice that undercuts hope and faith with 
negativity and cynicism. It's the voice of doubt.  I suppose I should call 
it Richard Dawkins, but in fact it sounds exactly like a woman who, in my 
youth, used to "correct" me in a big sisterly way by ripping strips off my 
hide, usually over the phone.  I'd listen obediently as she told me exactly 
how messed-up I was. It never occurred to me at the time (though it 
certainly would now!) that I could simply hang up.

I've struggled with this voice for years now; I've cowed before it, bowed 
down to it, tried to run away from it, hated it, feared it, fought with it, 
given in to it, rebelled against it. What I've never managed to do is to 
silence it. As I sat in church trying to cultivate an attitude of 
gratitude, it was grousing gently in the background. "Work will never come 
in," it whispered. "You'll stay stuck where you are, your life 
half-rebuilt. God's got nothing to do with it -- if there is a God." Right 
in the middle of the sermon. Oh, thanks.

One thing has, however, changed of late. I no longer beat myself up for 
feeling doubt; I've learned that so far from being a black sin against God, 
it's where I do my best work. I saw a diagram recently of two overlapping 
circles, one labeled "theology", the other labeled "experience"; it was a 
diagram of how pieces like the Sabbath Blessings get developed. I take 
theology in one hand and experience in the other and overlap the two, and 
that overlap is where I work stuff out. If the circles are congruent (say, 
"God's goodness" and some happy news), then there's little or no work 
involved. It's when the two circles are in opposition (say, "forgiveness" 
and "betrayal") that the work happens, and the greater the disparity, the 
harder the work.

But that's also the richest and most complex work, and the most deeply 
soul-satisfying. It's this experience that all the simple solutions -- 
Dawkins's thundering atheism on one side or the God-the-divine-clockmaker 
"true believers" on the other -- miss out on. It ultimately leads the soul 
to bump up against Mystery and fall back into God's lap like a tired child, 
knowing that whatever deep truths there are, the deepest is likely "it 
ain't that simple". Doubt isn't a weakness in faith; if it were, I'd have 
been out of the faith business years ago. Doubt is fundamental to faith; it 
keeps faith honest and makes it real.

Doing what I'm doing at the moment is stressful (find me a freelancer who 
doesn't hate marketing!), but that doesn't mean that God's not at work in 
the landscape, only that it's early days yet. Beating myself up for doubt 
only adds to the stress. God know where I am, and why I'm here, and God 
knows I do try to do my best. Including writing this piece, which didn't 
much want to be written.

I told my kid sister about the voice in my head. She laughed and said, 
"Slam down the phone!" "I'm too Canadian!," I answered, "I should say 
'Sorry' and hang up gently." "You were born and bred a Yank," she said. 
"Slam down the phone, as hard as you can. Pound it right into the floor."

I don't know if I can quite do that. But I don't have to listen.