[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Driving Eastward

It's a little after 4 PM on a clear January day and I am driving home 
from the city. Which means that I am driving east at that very 
special time of day when the sun is just above the horizon.

This time of year, I plan my westward journeys so that I am *not* 
driving west at 4 PM. I don't happen to possess sunglasses. At 4-ish 
in the afternoon, if I'm heading west, the sun plants itself directly 
between sun visor and dashboard, enormously inflated by the 
atmosphere and painfully brilliant. The only way I can see to drive 
is to hold up one hand to protect my eyes, a somewhat problematic way 
of operating a standard transmission. Even walking westward is a problem.

Driving eastward is a different matter. Sure, the sun is blazing in 
my rear view mirror, but that's manageable. I can still check the 
side mirrors, less bad.

What I notice today, for a change, is what this sunlight is doing to 
the landscape. We are now in High Winter, that brutal brilliant 
season of cold and real snow, of which we've had a fair bit. There's 
a beauty to this season, if you're willing to get past the cold and 
look at it, especially if you get out of town and look at the 
countryside, which is full of quietness and mystery. There is, at 
dusk, always the moment when everything turns an entrancing electric 
blue, something that never fails to astonish me.

It's also a time of monochrome. Under a brilliant blue sky, we range 
from perfectly flat-white fields to the black of asphalt, the 
steel-grey of water, the quiet grey-browns of denuded woodland. Even 
the evergreen spruce and pine look chastened.

But not in *this* light. As I drive east with the sun at my back, the 
woods are quietly glowing; the light gilds them. It's as though 
they've been brought to a sort of life, not the green life of summer, 
but a light-life in the midst of frozen quiet. There's a shimmer off 
the snow, too, a reflection of gold, and there's brilliance on the 
whitecaps on the river.

I think to myself: I don't think I could, as I now am, face straight 
into God; it would be like trying to drive westward at this time of 
day. It would be more than I could bear. I've come to believe, with 
C.S. Lewis, that after death we need a time of strengthening and 
preparation before we can come face to face with our Creator. My 
sister speaks of her belief in a cool quiet "time out" place, where 
we sinners can sit for however long it takes, and mend, and make 
ourselves ready. I like that idea. I *know* I'm going to need 
something along those lines. I know of others who may refuse that 
quiet grace, because it would convict them of their own need for 
forgiveness and they aren't going to go there. But that's between 
them and God. Not my affair.

But I also think: While I can't face God's very self any more than I 
can cope with the setting sun, I can look over the landscape and see 
how God's love glows indirectly back in ways my human sight can absorb.

Oh, sure, I can look for the mess and the muddle; I can focus on Gaza 
and the Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the horrors that we 
inflict upon another, as we turn away from the light towards our own 
willful destructiveness -- everything we do to ourselves and each 
other out of fear or pride, greed or hatred, or sheer garden-variety 
stupidity. Everything we do in the key of "me," we set between 
ourselves and God and between God's love and other human beings. I 
can look at that, if I choose.

And I can still look at this golden light on snow and see that 
whatever we do, God's love is unshakably *steady*.  Whether or not we 
want it, it is simply there. This briefly illumined landscape would 
still be beautiful with or without my witness. The brevity of the 
moment is only because I'm human; it exists eternally in God's steadfastness.

I can also see that maybe our job -- even if we can't face God 
one-on-one -- is to receive this warmth and and transmit it to others 
as best we can, however imperfect and screwed-up a job we make of it. 
And we must do so unconditionally. I think of the glow of 
unconditional love I've received from others in this last while, and 
what healing power it has had in my life. I've been as aware of it, 
and as grateful for it, as I am aware and grateful for this light, 
which reminds me of God's steady love.

This light will go, and very quickly; this is only a momentary glow, 
although it's a glow I can now look for whenever I drive east at this 
time of day, in high winter, out in this quiet landscape. It will be 
there again.

Maybe, if I'm willing to give it attention, when I look for this 
light, I'll feel extra warmth on the back of my neck.

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