[SB] Sabbath Blessing -- Christmas Eve 2008

[Molly Wolf]

Winter Teaching

I like the way that winter teaches patience.

There's no way you can rush from one end of town 
to another; the main street's still greasy with 
snowfall, and traffic is moving slowly. It's not 
particularly cold, but the slush is deep and we 
know it, so we stop to let people jaywalk rather 
than making them wait or walk to the end of the 
block. There's no hurry anyway, not in a small 
town, not on the eve of Christmas.

Walking is a matter of patience, too, with a 
dollop of endurance; your footing is never quite 
sure, so you take smaller steps, moving more 
slowly, and it's a step forward and a tiny slip back each and every time.

Clearing up (unless you have a snowblower) is a 
patient process as well. I don't do my own 
driveway now, but I remember years and years of 
methodically dealing with snow: clearing wide and 
moving the snow well off to the side, to allow 
for future storms. It was meditative work, 
something I couldn't rush because I'd just 
exhaust (and perhaps injure) myself. Sometimes it 
took two or three tries, with defrosting breaks, 
to get the entire driveway clear. I learned 
during one hard year not to let the snow get too 
deep; it was easier to shovel two 5-inch falls 
than one 10-inch one, especially when it fell heavy and wet.

How do people learn patience without winter? I 
wonder about that sometimes. Patience is about 
giving up control of the situation -- or rather, 
recognizing that you never did have control of 
the situation -- and accepting that this is just 
going to be the way it is, and there's not a 
whole lot of point getting your knickers knotted 
about it. That what winter teaches.

That seems to be impossibly difficult for some 
people. I admit that it's a whole lot harder if, 
like me, you have a good-sized will and a strong 
notion about the way things ought to be -- but 
perhaps to people with that combination of 
characteristics, life seems to dump more and 
heavier snowfalls. Otherwise, we'd get our own 
way too often and believe that getting our way 
should be the normal state of affairs.

Of course patience, like so many other virtues 
(loyalty, honour, forbearance, steadfastness, 
fortitude -- you know, all those stuffy, 
hopelessly pre-modern, annoyingly goody-two-shoes 
qualities) is now generally regarded as a failure 
to advance the all-important cause of Me. "I want 
it my way, and I want it NOW" is what our culture 
clatters. And sooner or later it all comes 
crashing down, as it's doing at this present 
time. "This storm means that I can't get my nails done!" we whine.

But in fact, God chose the other way, the wintry 
way of patience. Of course most of the world 
doesn't do winter the way we do here in Canada 
(and sometimes we don't either), but the 
symbolism is strong and most important: God joins 
us in the waste places where we struggle, and he 
joins us not from a position of mightiness and 
strength, but in a position of helplessness and 
vulnerability. Why? Because God loves us so much 
that God wanted to be with us completely, in all 
*our* helplessness and vulnerability.

So to our unending benefit, God chose to fit 
Godself into the rubbery, tight, muscular 
confines of a womb, something that should 
astonish us afresh each time we think of it, an 
act of the most outrageous grace and humility and 
submission. An act of extraordinary patience.

And we have spent the four weeks of Advent 
waiting patiently for this night -- but our 
patience hasn't been a matter of suffering and 
endurance, but of holy anticipation. We wait in 
trust for the Second Coming, somehow keeping our 
lamps lit and our souls ready, but without trying 
to hurry it. As a woman in the last weeks of 
pregnancy waits, knowing that it will happen when 
it happens and not a minute before it's ready.

My own personal winter has taught me patience, 
primarily with myself. "I want to be over this, 
and I want it NOW!" didn't work particularly 
well. Healing happens in its own good way and its 
own good time, and there's no point being 
impatient with it. As a wise woman once said, 
"you cannot hurry a tree, a baby, or a 
hard-boiled egg."  I had to accept that I was 
where I was, for as long as I was, because that's 
where I needed to be, even if I didn't like it 
very much. But now I'm not there any longer. It was a matter of patience.

Our winters teach us patience; they teach us that 
"the journey, not the arrival, matters". We will 
get where we need to be when we need to get 
there, if we trust in God's patient, tender care 
for us. It's especially hard in the midst of 
winter storms, when the world feels very 
dangerous indeed. But that's when faith does its most serious workouts.

I got given a line -- the French call it _la 
ligne donnée_ -- the line that starts a poem 
spinning, the first given line I'd had in a 
terrible long time. It used to be that when I got 
a given line, I'd jump on it and bat it around, 
the words pouring through my fingertips and onto 
the screen -- but this time, I took my time 
getting home, made a mug of tea, transferred the 
laundry to the dryer, fed the cats, checked my 
email... The line would wait for me until I was ready to play with it.

"I like the way that winter teaches patience."

Yes.

*****************************************
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns 
something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain  
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