[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Nudged

Why was it so urgently important to pay a visit to my friend Martine? 
True, she's been in France for the last month and we hadn't talked in 
ages. True, I am just getting into playing around with glass, and she 
is an artist who also works in glass (and has the most fascinating 
stash!). But there was something else going on. I had the send of 
being gently but firmly nudged, and nudges are something I take seriously.

So I called Martine and we arranged a lunch date at her charming, 
sunny house in Merrickville, and I drove up through a Mud Season 
rain-lashed landscape, which looked pretty far from lovable (it's 
very, very soggy around here), and Martine gave me delicious soup and 
we had crackers and cheese and grapes. We talked about her sojourn in 
Nice and how my kids were doing and all that. I looked at what she'd 
been getting up to in her art; neat stuff. And then she produced the 
book. (She didn't give me her copy, but I found my own copy in a 
bookstore on the way home.)

It's a book on neuroplasticity -- the brain's ability to rejig itself 
all the way through life, compensating, pruning, growing, reforming 
its connections. The old notion that the brain is hardwired at the 
end of youth and that specific functions "map" permanently to 
specific brain locations is, apparently, contradicted by the 
evidence. We are forever dancing with our brains. Which is 'way kewl.

I am, of course, in no position to figure out what the scientific 
status of all this is (except that the book got a blurb from Oliver 
Sacks, among others). But like Martine, I have been racing through 
chapter after chapter, getting my own personal belief system 
substantially rewired.

This sort of thing has been happening a lot of late. Maybe it's sheer 
impulsivity (but it doesn't feel like that) but some force seems to 
be nudging me around, gently but firmly: "Go here. Try this. Talk to 
this person." I have long since learned that the first duty of a 
Christian is obedience, and this feels very much like the Holy Spirit 
in action (not least because there's so much creativity in play).

I am finding my singing voice. I am learning how to move when I sing, 
which, for someone who has been a complete shame-ridden physical 
klutz from early childhood, is no easy matter. I am trying new 
creative endeavours. I am working on the spiritual knots in my head. 
I am thinking about new university courses, this time in psychology. 
I want to find ways of putting new learning to work in loving ways. 
Things have come unstuck; things are in motion. Yes, I've been here 
before. It's an iterative process, this healing.

It was in response to the next nudge (this one coming out of the 
book, which came out of the Martine-nudge) that I picked up the phone 
and called another friend, Sarah. "I know this is out of the blue," I 
said, "but would you be interested in coming with me to dance 
lessons?" Sarah is generally pretty swift, but this did rock her back 
on her heels a little. I don't know why dance lessons, except that 
somehow the klutz wants to learn how to be physically rhythmic; I 
don't know why Sarah. But I do know a good nudge when I feel it.

The landscape may be at its least beautiful right now, but the pale 
green thrust of the daylily leaves has begun on roadside banks amid 
the bones of the Shield, and if you look well, you can see buds. The 
snow's pretty much gone from the woods, and the landscape is still, 
waiting.The willows have turned that odd chartreuse-y golden that 
they take on, this time of year.

I feel blessed that where I live, Easter almost invariably falls in 
Mud Season. And I feel blessed that there's Someone out there who 
gives good nudges.

Sarah talks about "following the trail of crumbs" through the forest. 
There's light over the next ridge.



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