[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Trailing Edge

We are into the trailing edge of High Winter. It is no longer a 
penitential act to grip a car's steering wheel with ungloved hands 
(well, most mornings, anyway). The sun is stronger and the days are 
longer and there's a general sense that winter's end is, if not in 
sight, over the horizon somewhere.

That being said, this is southeastern Ontario, and we know perfectly 
well that we've got at least another month in which we could get 
clobbered. There was one memorable year (I've blotted out which one) 
in which we had five major snowstorms one right after the other, all 
the way into April. That's just the breaks some years.

Nonetheless, we are raising our chins from our chests, taking deep 
unfrozen breaths, and starting to think about going for real walks 
again, just because of the light. And also, we know the pattern. We 
do this cycle year after year after year: Spring, Summer, Fall, Mud 
Season, Christmas Shopping,  High Winter, Low Winter, Mud Season.... 
(In Winnipeg, allegedly they have only four seasons: Winter, Winter, 
Winter, and Construction.)

But there is a much larger progression, one that isn't cyclical and 
that is so huge and so outside our own limitations that we have 
trouble grasping it in any real, practical sense. Oh, we can say the 
words we've been taught to believe: that Jesus the Christ died in 
order to break the power of sin and death. But what does that *mean*?

Sin and death don't seem to have lost much of their grip on Creation, 
going by the daily news. I could itemize, but there's not much point 
to it. Given the three wild cards of biology, physics, and human free 
will, suffering continues to be real and deep. People don't just 
make  misguided or unfortunate choices, although of course there are 
plenty of those. They often make actively cruel, destructive choices, 
usually out of anger or self-righteousness or, more frightening, 
because it gives them the narcotic rush of having POWER over another 
person. And then they try to hide from God's clear, loving gaze that 
mirrors their evil to themselves.

But thinking about trailing edges gave me an image to meditate upon. 
Maybe I can see the Crucifixion not as the end of sin and suffering 
-- I have a degree in history after all -- but as a breaking moment, 
the consequences of which are still working their way out. The 
leading edge of a wing cuts into air, creating turbulence and sending 
air over and under the wing's surface. As the air comes off the 
trailing edge, it forms large trailing vortices. (I don't really know 
much about this, and I sit ready for correction.) We can't see this, 
of course, unless we colour the air with something -- smoke works 
well. Yet it still happens.

Maybe we're still in that trailing vortex, waiting for the breaking 
moment to finish playing itself out. It's only been a couple of 
thousand years, the blink of an eye in cosmic time (not to mention 
eternity). But we have no experience of what lies ahead, unlike 
Canada in mid-February, because this progression isn't a circle of 
seasons in human time.

I don't know. But as metaphors go, I think I like this one.

It gives me faith that no matter how screwed-up this world looks, 
there are forces at work that lift us and carry us forward, 
regardless of the inevitability of drag. I'm highly conscious of the 
drag -- and I gather that the stronger the push, the stronger the 
push-back, which probably accounts for an awful lot in the lives of 
the saints. But we're heading where God wants us to go. I have more 
faith in that now.



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