[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Equinox

I cannot remember a more equinoctial equinox than this one.

(Yes, "equinoctial" is a word. I looked it up.)

Just as day and night are exactly poised, ready to tip winterward, so 
the landscape is exactly poised between very late summer and very 
early fall. A couple of days ago, the marshes were green, exquisitely 
tinged with gold; now they are gold, exquisitely tinged with green. 
The  foliage too is poised: mostly the trees have got that 
almost-black deep late-summer green, but some are letting the green 
go, starting to shade towards yellow, and a few are already turning.

This equinox is unique. That's a cliched word, and I rarely use it 
(especially because a whole lot of people now think that it's just a 
more elegant way of saying "unusual", which it isn't -- sorry, 
editor's pet peeve now <off>). It's unlike any fall equinox I can 
remember because an unusually mild and rainy summer gave the 
landscape a richness lasting well into the season when grasses 
usually die back and the greenery fades. Everything that could flower 
has flowered profusely and at length. Now it's the asters, which are 
riotous, but only a week or so ago Queen Anne's lace was turning 
whole fields white.

But now it's perfectly balanced, on the cusp, waiting. One good 
frost, or another week, and we'll definitely be into fall.

I say this equinox is unique, and of course it isn't: each and every 
year, the fall equinox comes and goes and each and every fall the 
landscape makes that turn into autumn; all that's unusual this year 
is that the two events are in such near-perfect coincidence, and 
that's noticeable, at least to those with eyes to notice, living in 
places where the landscape is still right up front there. It's 
probably a whole lot more obvious in the Thousand Islands than it is 
Toronto, and it's more obvious to me than to others because I have a 
bug about landscape.

But it made me think, as I walked down by the water, of this odd 
thing we've got about turning points. That grand old hymn "Once to 
every man and nation/ Comes the moment to decide" got canned from the 
revised hymnal because it implies that every choice is a 
one-of-a-kind occasion, irretrievably determining the future. And of 
course, that's true in a sense, but it isn't true. We have any number 
of kicks at the can, so far as salvation is concerned, something that 
drives the judgmental around the bend because dammit, we *want* the 
bad guys to get no second chances. Or at least, not thirds.

In that sense, we're more like the turn of the seasons, year after 
year. We make mistakes; we do real wrong. Ideally, we repent and make 
amends. We make fresh and original mistakes, or perhaps we go on 
repeating the same old tired ones over and over again. And yet, God's 
love is always there. In today's Gospel (the parable of the vineyard 
workers, at least in these parts), it's so bloody unfair: the 
long-suffering hardworking all-day guys get no more for all their 
hours than the guys who put in an hour in the cool of the day. That's 
what mercy is about.

But at the same time, the hymn, while not true, is still true. Each 
choice leaves something done and something undone, and that choice 
has consequences. What we do has effects, some of them far more 
far-reaching than we could ever begin to imagine, stretching out like 
ripples in the water after you've dropped a stone in. Individual 
choices may end up canceling each other out, or being of not much 
importance, or developing in unexpected ways, or finding up in the 
most exhilirating or exasperating or terrifying places..

But while choices are one-of-a-kind, like this fall equinox, we have 
*patterns* of choices, like the general swing of the seasons; and 
those patterns are soul-determining. We may, for example, choose to 
take things amiss, reading ill intent into the most innocent matters 
and failing to do a reality check. Everybody does this now and again; 
the question is whether it turns into a regular thing. We may indulge 
in righteous anger; we may have a need to win at all costs; we may be 
selfish -- there are any number of ways in which patterns of choices 
may, in the long run, turn us either towards God or in other directions.

In short, there are choices and there are habits, and the one turns 
into the other and the other determines the one. Maybe that's what 
the hymn is about.

As always, it's not an either-or; it's a both/and -- and perhaps a 
neither/nor. We are forgiveable; we are also responsible. We can 
exist on the cusp and tumble forwards or backwards, but (unlike the 
equinoctial landscape) we do have choice. We can do this over and 
over again, as long as we're willing to be conscious of the choices 
we're making. And ultimately, we choose one way or the other the 
plurality, and then the majority, of times; and that gets to be defining.

Meanwhile, the day is exactly half light and half dark, something 
that shifts as we swing around the sun and my half of the Earth 
(especially the more northerly parts) turns away from the Sun, like a 
dancer swinging head back down at arms' length from her partner. I 
know where we're heading; I also know we'll come back again, on the 
other side of winter.

For now, it's just beauty, wobbling on the cusp. I'll hang here with 
it for as long as it lasts.




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