[SB] Sabbath blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Epiphany

Astonishingly rich as it is, English sometimes lacks a word -- for example, 
a formal term for the wintertime build-up of slush on the flap behind a car 
wheel. Said build-up freezes solid until you kick it, leaving deposits 
oddly reminiscent of horse droppings. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 
had at one time a feature called "Wanted Words", which came up with 
much-needed terms: "cachablanca" for a safe hiding place whose location you 
subsequently forget, or "ice kaputs" for the little involuntary dance you 
do when you've lost your footing on a frozen sidewalk.

Lately, I've been scrambling for a one-word term signifying prophetic 
dismay: you see an alarming situation unfolding, identify the potential 
negative fall-out, remonstrate with those responsible; get into huge, 
unending/unbending argy-bargies with the opposition; and then, in 
frustration and angry dismay, watch your prophecy come true. Global 
warming, the state of the Anglican communion, a good many marriages, and 
the Ontario public school system all come to mind.   Others of a more 
conservative persuasion could adduce their own examples -- sexual 
immorality, for example, or the fecklessness of the poor, or the 
irresponsibility of the young.  Choose your test case.

It's frustrating, running slap-up against denial -- when the party of the 
second part isn't budging in spite of what seems blindingly obvious to 
you.  It magnifies the problem something wonderful. And of course it often 
leads you (well, me, anyway) into behaviour that's just as 
counterproductive. Both sides end up dug-in in their respective trenches, 
and if my beloved readers in the U.S. of A. do not recall trench warfare 
and what it was like, we Canajuns have vivid (if now vicarious) memories. 
You just keep blasting yourself in deeper and deeper. It is, undoubtedly, 
unhelpful and just ordinary *stupid*.

This last week, I found myself briefly drawn into one such tank war, 
lobbing email posts back and forth in that wearying, useless, 
nobody's-really-listening  dynamic that's marked too much of my cyberlife 
from the get-go -- the first Anglican email list I ever belonged to began 
with a trench-war dispute on homosexuality, and that's getting on for 12 
years ago. I was settling in for the long lobbing of shots back and forth, 
but then something changed.

In Advent, I took up the useful discipline of pausing midday, going to a 
good and holy church, doing some formal prayer of thanksgiving and 
supplication, lighting candles, and then writing private stuff for a while. 
On Wednesday (I think it was), I found myself kneeling in that prayer-rich 
quiet space and feeling utterly drained and exhausted. Not intellectually, 
but physically.

I have learned, in the last couple of years, to give serious attention to 
what my body -- my soul's faithful, patient, sturdy, too-often-neglected 
donkey -- has to say, because my body is sometimes a whole lot wiser than I 
am. My body was saying "stop". Don't do this any longer. Don't feed on 
righteous anger, because it's a powerful potion but one that's toxic in all 
but the smallest doses. Don't dredge up old anger and bring it into play 
again; just let it go. Let go. Let go.

And I did. I put a brief and unapologetic end to the barrage of email. I 
didn't care if that made me a loser. I didn't care if my opponent went 
unconverted. I just let it go.

Yes, Jesus confronted evil without mincing his words. But I am not Jesus; I 
can't claim his authority. Yes, we're to acknowledge and oppose all evil, 
and I understand that. But too often, we muddle our own issues and agendas 
with "confronting wrong". Jesus may have confronted evil, but he also said 
over and over and over again that judging others gets us nowhere; it's our 
own issues and illusions that we need to turn and confront. "When you see a 
louse in someone else's hair, immediately check your own scalp for nits of 
the same species."

Righteous anger is so pure, so exhilarating, so exalting, so clarifying. If 
we focus on sexual sin in our neighbour's life, we don't have to look at 
our own adulteries. If we make our spouse (or child or sibling or parent or 
friend)  the "problem person" in a relationship, then we get to duck our 
own issues. If we're perfectly clear on judging others, maybe we can 
slither neatly past judgment.  Or so we think.

We forget that, in ways that we can never begin to consider, we cannot 
snooker our dearly loving God.  Ever.

My job in the Journey is to get on making my own soul. Maybe -- rarely -- 
that may involve rebuking someone, but it should be a seldom thing. The 
desire to rebuke should be, like my exhaustion, an important signal that I 
need to look at what's going on in my soul. Righteous anger, like 
single-malt Scotch, is a thing to be sipped in tiny quantities, and it 
won't hurt to avoid it altogether. I have more important things to sink my 
energies into.

Love is the most problematic. Which may be why righteousness is so 
deliciously attractive.

(For Alan Y.)