[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

More Rocks in the Rivers

More dropping (or occasionally tossing) rocks (and sometimes other 
natural objects) into one or the other of the local rivers. This 
turns out to be a really neat technique that I can commend to anyone 
else who, like me, has a certain amount of difficulty putting 
spiritual rightness into everyday practice. We *know* what's the 
right course of action; we just keep sliding effortlessly off the 
strait and narrow the way a car slides off glare ice.

Submission, for example. I ran up against the word with a significant 
*clunk* on Tuesday and was told by a wise and loving woman that if 
the word makes me this nervous, it's time I took a closer look at it.

Oh.

Why does the word "submission" make me nervous? Because it feels like 
-- and indeed is -- a sort of death, a loss, a defeat. The culture we 
wallow in glorifies individualism and winning and all that stuff and 
sees submission as "loser" humiliation, having somehow mislaid the 
notion of healthy humility. We're all being urged to preach, convert, 
and heal each other, sometimes from secularism, sometimes from 
religion. (As Huston Smith rightly points out, there are *two* equal 
and opposite types of dogmatic religious fundamentalism lobbing rocks 
at each other.)

Back to submission <shudder>: theologically, I know that what's being 
killed/ lost/ defeated needs exactly that. It's something even Jesus 
struggled with. I know with my head, looking back, that my own 
considerable will has made a godalmighty mess of things in the past. 
My experience conforms nicely to that old saying about insanity being 
expecting different results from the same old, same old.

I know with my head that God's will is far more intelligent than 
mine, having all the advantages of eternity, unending love, infinite 
goodness, and the lot. I just don't quite trust God to do the job the 
way I want to see it done.

What was that about will again?

So down to the river, pick up a rock (turns out there's a fine supply 
of them conveniently placed, close to the swans' run). "My will," I 
mutter, turning the stone over and over in my hands, praying my own 
wilfulness around it before giving it a good overhand toss, nowhere 
near the swans, of course. I swear it didn't want to leave my hands, 
but I insisted.

The next day, I tossed in a prayer for the desire to learn 
submission. Sometimes you can't want a thing directly; you have to 
want to want to want it, moving stepwise downward from this distant 
desire to something closer and more personal.

And I talked at length with other wise and loving people, who quite 
understood what the problem is. Letting go of control is hard when 
you've been brought up to be over-responsible and conscientious, 
things I am very good at. When you've gotten through an awful lot of 
Stuff by sheer willpower, it's hard to set that down. Almost always, 
our character defects are positive traits or behaviours that turned 
into bad habits.

More rocks in the river. And the occasional wildflower, just for a change.

I'm not sure when the shift happened, but when I tossed a nice little 
bit of pink granite over the rail of the north bridge this morning, 
something shifted -- one of those tiny but perceptible "bumps" like a 
burp-sized inner earthquake.

Submission doesn't mean giving up. It means giving up.

It doesn't mean abandoning my own needs and desires; it means setting 
down burdens that I never had any business carrying in the first 
place. The only soul I can be responsible for is my own. I can, with 
love and luck, perhaps accompany another soul on its spiritual 
journey, just keeping it company and sharing my experience, but it's 
not my job to do that soul's work or even to guide it.

And if that soul chooses not to make that journey, it's not my job to 
get it on the road, either. That doesn't mean abandoning the other 
person either; it means entrusting that person to God's tender 
mercies and trusting that if it doesn't turn out the way I think it 
should, the problem is with my attachment to outcomes.

Another seismic hiccup: the evil we encounter in this world results 
from our wholesale failure to submit to the great goodness that 
breathes through Creation, whatever we may choose to call it, however 
we may decide to think about it. There is, as Smith points out, a 
grammar of holiness out there that permeates humankind -- except, of 
course, for those who are too busy lobbing fundamentalist dogmas at 
each other (and the rest of us) to give it any sort of hearing.

I leaned on the bridge with that thought, quietly breathing in the 
created beauty around me: the silver water, the intense green, the 
quiet swans, a family of ducks, birdsong, rain so quiet and gentle it 
felt like a caress. I am so lucky to live with such beauty. How could 
I ever have burdened myself so badly that I lost sight of it?

Another rock in the river. The rivers don't seem to mind at all. Some 
rocks are right for the smaller one, others for the big one, but the 
water is big enough to take on anything I choose to give it.



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