[SB] Sabbath Blessing (a day late)

[Molly Wolf]

At Last!

Not the Sabbath Blessing: winter. It's white and cold out there, and we've 
had freezing rain as well. It's not too bad here, but I gather Toronto is a 
real mess. Torontonians are relearning their winter driving chops the hard, 
expensive way. (Sidetrack: the rest of us Canajuns, except British 
Columbians, who know how little they know about snow, have been tweaking 
Toronto about the s-word ever since, several years ago, the city had to 
call in the army after a series of back-to-back snowstorms dumped 2-1/2 
feet of snow on the joint. Sorry, Toronto: the price of greatness is the 
occasional raspberry.)

There is one secret and one only for making your way around by car in snow: 
patience. Go slow. Leave space. Hope the other guy leaves you space, but 
that's a good reason for being even more patient. When starting from a 
stop, lay the tip of your great toe ever-so-gently upon the accelerator. 
Make your turns in serene slow-mo. Use the brakes only if it's necessary, 
and do your best to make sure that necessary isn't. (Having a standard 
transmission helps no end, of course.)

I find myself falling into habits of winter-driving patience with 
surprising ease, given the fact that in non-winter conditions I am just a 
trifle ... er... quick. Generally more often passing than being passed -- 
not really *aggressive*, though, just peppy.  But when snow hits, an inner 
switch flips in my driving hindbrain, and I pull out the patience long 
since developed by having a five-year-old stand on my foot and take 45 
minutes to narrate the plot of a 30-minute Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles 
show, as I got supper ready.

Sometimes, unless you're an emergency response person (they've been busy), 
there is no point in even thinking about trying to hurry something up. 
Births, deaths, hard-boiled eggs, book production, friendship, getting to 
the supermarket in a snowstorm -- these take their own good time, and 
getting one's knickers twisted by their slowness is counterproductive, as 
hundreds of fender-bent Torontonians have forcibly recollected today.

I thought of this as I fishtailed slowly and gracefully (and in perfect 
control) across a wash of plow-churned slush: the human tendency to want it 
NOW.  Victory, for example, or gratification or love or any other thing 
that we desire strongly. Sometimes we're so fixed on the immediate I WANT 
IT that we fail to note that patience may be what's most required. No, I am 
not going to make that green light and the heck with it; another one will 
appear in due course.

One thing some people are in a hell of a hurry for, apparently, is the 
Second Coming: they want Jesus to reappear in dazzling brilliance in the 
East and put the whole show to an end: Judgment Day, the raising of the 
dead, the Rapture. I have, I freely admit it, a cynical streak, and I have 
to wonder if part of their eagerness stems from a deep desire to see the 
unRaptured heathen get theirs, but I should be more charitable.

But predicting the immanent Second Coming can be trying to get God to play 
according to our immediate wishes. We don't have to make sacrifices for the 
future that we've borrowed from our granchildren, if we've decided that the 
future will end very shortly. We're trying to force God's hand, and that 
simply will not work, any more than I can pretend that winter will go away 
if I want it to.  Some seem to feel that because the Second Coming could 
happen any day now, there's really no need to pay much heed to, say global 
warming. It will all look after itself when Jesus comes. If I remember 
correctly, St. Paul had similar expectations about the future of marriage, 
getting on for two millennia ago.

The oldest document in the New Testament (scholars tell us) is Paul's 
letter to the little church in Thessalonika, which was worrying about the 
fact that some of its members had died while awaiting Jesus's return. Paul 
really struggles with this problem. He still believes that Jesus will 
return in his lifetime, but in the meantime, he tells them what prophets 
have been telling people since Jeremiah, at least, probably before: be 
patient. Live faithfully and lovingly in this day.

C.S. Lewis said wisely not to live in the past or in the future, but in the 
present -- but part of the present is making ready for the future. It is 
not living in the future if I make ready for winter; it's living with this 
world in the here-and-now.  Maybe it won't hurt us -- won't be a matter of 
faithlessness -- if we even give a thought about what we need to do 
tomorrow, not worrying about it, but making ready for its possibility, even 
its likelihood.

We're called upon to believe in the ultimate victory of God's Kingdom way, 
and we are called upon to work for it here and now, in a future that still 
unfolds one step at a time, so far as we know. It's a paradox, as is so 
much else in faith: to live ready to leave *and* ready to stay, the two 
held in tension, but both pulled Godward. We're called upon to be both 
hopeful and patient, but above all, to live as fully as we can into the 
reality that surrounds us. Which means driving for winter conditions when 
it's winter instead of pretending that if we ignore it, it will go away.

I really shouldn't tease Toronto; it's unkind. But hey, *I* survived the 
Great Ice Storm of '98 and I know a thing or two about how to handle a car 
under highly trying circumstances. Just everybody take a deep breath, slow 
up, leave space, be patient. This too shall pass.