[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Clothesline

I hung out a load of towels on Friday, the first towel-load of the season. 
I try to use the clothesline as much as possible; it's environmentally 
sound, it's free, and everything smells marvelously fresh when I bring it 
back in. Towels are less fluffy, true, but they soften up just about 
immediately.

I got into this habit back at the old house, the house in which I raised my 
kids; we had a fine clothesline, long enough for four or five loads' worth, 
when properly packed (and oh, can I pack a clothesline!). I used to stand 
on the seat of the old picnic table and stare down over the field behind 
the house as I pinned out laundry. The house that I'm leaving next month -- 
I'm thinking of it now as the middle house, the house sandwiched between 
the two *real* houses -- has no space for a line of that sort, so I have 
one of the poky umbrella-type drying lines instead. It's less refreshing to 
stare at my neighbour's faintly pinkish vinyl siding, six feet away, when I 
pin out laundry, but at least it still gets the job done.

I am starting to think about the new house, as I begin to pack and shift my 
life that half-hour to the east. I am thinking that I could run a 
clothesline from the back deck to a pole attached to the car port. It 
wouldn't be a long line, but it would be convenient to the back door, and 
besides, I'll be the only person doing laundry most of the time. It's doable.

I'll need help, though; I'm not especially good with handyman stuff, and 
I'm not sure of the best way of setting the laundry posts up. Lucky for me, 
my about-to-be next-door neighbour Stefen is handy and likes helping out. 
It's not a big or onerous job, just an hour's work, I'd guess. Yes, I could 
ask Stefen to help me set up the laundry line. After all, I've already got 
the yarn for the socks I'm going to knit for him by way of trade. It's 
something I've missed about small towns, this casual swapping of help-out, 
the way we bring gifts differing to each other's aid, like potluck at the 
Banquet.

I've already sat out with Stefen and his beautiful Val, and their friends 
Ken and his beautiful Tanis, around a backyard bonfire and noodled away at 
guitar-playing. We're all in choir together, and we were fooling around 
with God-music. There's the beginning of a way of life there that I think I 
could slip into easily. Yes, I'll be alone in my house, on my own for the 
first time in my life, but I will be far less alone in a fundamental way: I 
will be part of community, a community that operates every day, not just 
Sunday, and that actively works at putting faith into action.

This matters enormously to me. I do not, in and of myself, have the ability 
to look after my new house properly without help that I cannot yet afford 
to buy. But I also have gifts of which others may want to avail themselves. 
I knit socks. I bake (if I say so myself) damned good French bread. I make 
good soup and give it away. I can sing; I can mend; I can listen lovingly. 
It's sweet, if a little scary, to know that this exchange for which I've 
longed really does seem to be in view.

Scary, because community is about need and vulnerability, as well as 
carpentry and handknit socks; it's about putting up a hand and saying, 
"Please, I need a little help here?" and that can be a real anxiety-maker. 
If I say what I need, how will that go over? If I pray, what answer will 
God give me? That kind of deep trust comes hard to some of us, especially 
when we've trusted and had our trust betrayed.

In church this morning, I was going through one of my periodic 
faith-slumps. Sometimes our Lord, instead of a loving friend, felt more 
like a stranger with whom I am having a rather strained but polite 
conversation. I *know* better in my head, but having grown up with 
over-intellectualized faith, it's hard to shift the stuff past my larynx. 
It does not help that several highly significant figures in my life have 
been (1) devout Christians and (2) dysfunctional as hell, nor that so many 
of my agnostic friends seem to be well-balanced, loving, and happy people. 
So I struggle a lot. I can be open about this, because I know that just 
about everyone I know struggles too.

I almost held back from going for Communion, because I felt so.. so... 
so... ambivalently Christian. I went anyway; whatever my heart says, my 
head says that I need the Eucharist most when I feel least attached to it. 
I knelt between Stefen and Tanis and felt the two of them like two poles of 
faith, holding my weak faith up.

I told Tanis about this after church, and she hugged me and said that 
sometimes her faith gets pretty soggy too, and then she'll need me to be a 
pole to hang from.  I hope I can do that for her.

Meanwhile, I'd better get those socks cast on. I want that laundry line 
ASAP after the move.