[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Gemutlich

A friend of mine, whose German was spotty but reasonably good (mine 
is nearly non-existent), used to loathe the word "gemutlich" (I'm not 
putting in the umlaut over the "u" because the wandering electrons 
involved will probably shut down someone's computer or something). It 
means "nice". "Niiiice," my friend would sneer venomously.

I didn't entirely understand why this bugged him so much until the 
same thing happened to gore my own particular ox, which (inevitably) 
it did. Never mind the details. Let's just say that a person invests 
in Nice at the cost of Real, and that Real is necessary for anything 
approaching Good.

Nice, you see, requires selective attention. I have a working 
fireplace now, which greatly satisfies my long-standing latent 
pyromania. It is deeply, deliciously nice to get a good fire going, 
and to sit before it with a satisfying novel, and a glass of cider or 
hot chocolate, blissfully poking the logs; the cats and I are cosy 
and contented while the sleet sheets down outside. Nothing wrong with 
that; what's wrong is if my neighbour knocks at the door and I'm too 
cosy and contented to get up and go find out what it is he needs from 
me. What's wrong, also, is my failure to remember that while I am 
warm and well-fed and snugly housed, most of the world is not, and it 
is a state of affairs that should offend me deeply.

To be "gemutlich", my friend would say, requires that we draw the 
curtains and don't answer the door because we're too pleased with the 
niceness of ourselves and all around us. It requires that we omit all 
the unpleasant stuff. We filter it out of our own perceptions and out 
of what we show to others. We primp this bit and tuck that bit out of 
sight until we feel thoroughly pleased with our own condition. It 
feels niiiiiice.

The problem is that it doesn't really work very well. For starters, 
others aren't quite as oblivious as we are to the messy bits, the 
bits we'd like to keep out of sight. So we work a little harder at 
the oblivion; if we can't see it, then obviously it isn't there and 
the people who are talking about the problem just aren't seeing 
things the right way. We get a little more insistent. So do they. So 
we have to shut them down.

This particular dance of destruction can go on for quite a while. The 
problem is that the deeper and more complete our deception is, the 
more it becomes self-deception. The Light of truth begins to hurt our 
eyes, as the lies and injuries pile up in the wake of our 
self-absorption. We turn away from the Light and burrow into the 
warm, safe Darkness, where Nice is a more-than-acceptable substitute for Good.

We did this so thoroughly that God had to come into the Dark after 
us, because it was the only way we could be brought back out into the 
Light, where Love is there to heal us. For God's own good reasons, 
the dark closeness of the womb was where He started this journey to 
find and save us. He came burrowing into the human condition, being 
there with us every step of the way from conception to death, and out 
the other end into the Life to which he calls us.

Advent used to be thought of as penitential; that's changed. It's 
more thoughtful than repentant these days, and I have no quarrel with 
that. I see God not just overcoming the Dark but transforming it -- 
reclaiming it for God's purposes. Instead of that stuffy, close place 
into which cosiness burrows desperately at all costs, it becomes the 
night sky, mysterious but star-filled -- the majesty of galaxies 
strung throughout space, further than we can ever begin to imagine.

The blessed journey starts again, each year as startling as the last.