From lupa at kos.net  Sun Mar  1 23:52:12 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:52:12 -0500
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090301235216.60B63185079@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

Ashes

My excellent rector Mike preached the Lord's Prayer on Ash Wednesday, 
one phrase at a time: "Our father," our Abba; "hallowed be thy name," 
you, God, deserve our utmost respect; "thy kingdom come, thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven," let this world conform itself to 
God's will. And so forth and so on.

And then we got to the hard one, the one I have most trouble with: 
"forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

<sigh>

I usually quite enjoy Lent, but this Lent looks like it's going to be 
a slugger. I'm still hard at work on a particular Biggie.

I have said elsewhere and in the past that a big act of forgiveness 
is like a custom-built yacht: it takes twice as long and costs three 
times as much as you imagined it would. And this is a really *big* Biggie.

It is made more difficult by the fact that the party of the second 
part (hereinafter the PSP) does not acknowledge anything more a few 
minor booboos, that I got royally clobbered, that people I love 
dearly also got badly hurt, and that the PSP has repeatedly told me 
to "turn the page and move on" because that's what the PSP has done. 
Allegedly.

Yes, I know all that stuff: that forgiveness something I do for 
myself, not for the PSP. I understand that. I also understand that it 
is an absolute Christian imperative. I just have trouble with this 
one, and have had for far, far longer than I'm happy with. Dammit, 
why can't I get this over and done with? Periodically, I think I've 
managed it, but then something happens to set me off again and I feel 
like I'm back at Square One. (Actually, my nearest and dearest say 
that I'm not, but then, they would say that, wouldn't they?)

But every time I go around the long, slow, upward spiral of healing 
and recovery, I make some sort of discovery, and things shift a bit. 
This time, I had two things to hang onto as I listened to Mike preach.

First, a revelation that almost blinded me by how obvious it is: it 
is not for the PSP to determine when I should be turning pages. I'm 
not sure I've finished learning everything I need to learn from this 
particular page. I will turn it when I'm ready and not a minute 
sooner, and I will not beat myself up about not being further along 
in the process.

Second, forgiveness is about regaining power. Not power in the 
negative sense, of exerting power for your own ends over another 
person, but taking back your own power. My particular PSP is heavily 
into power in the negative sense, and keeping me spiritually 
off-balance is a really good way of retaining power. So part of the 
forgiveness process -- at least of *this* forgiveness process -- is 
getting royally P.O'd and blowing some good old-fashioned raspberries.

This second was a real revelation. There's an old wrong-headed notion 
of forgiveness with which preachers' kids (especially those of the 
feminine persuasion) raised in the nice-nice '50s tended to get stuck 
with: you aren't supposed to get angry; you aren't supposed to desire 
to clobber the person who hurt you; you're supposed to tender 
instantaneous unconditional forgiveness, considering only your part 
in the problem. Something along those lines.

Mike is a marvellous refreshment to me. He periodically reminds me 
that he's Italian, and sometimes he murmurs something about other 
people's kneecaps. I'm not sure who he has in mind, and I'm not going 
to ask. We've had the occasional out-and-out blowout and we both got 
over it real fast. Anger is perfectly okay. Resentment is another matter.

So my Lenten discipline this year, and it's going to be a toughie, 
isn't so much forgiving the PSP as finding new ways of approaching 
forgiveness, ones that don't involve constant self-criticism and that 
promote real health. I have what my wise daughter-in-love says is the 
single most important thing: I am willing to become willing to 
forgive. Sometimes I may add or subtract a "willing" from that 
phrase, but I'm there. I know it matters. I know it is the healthiest 
thing I can do for myself.

With the handful of fellow parishioners, I knelt at the rail and felt 
Mike's thumb stroke ashes onto my forehead. I was more than ready for them.



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


From lupa at kos.net  Sun Mar  8 17:13:14 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:13:14 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090308171318.918D2194D48@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

A Code in Da Head

On Monday, it was a tickly throat. By Tuesday 
morning, it was ?take sick day,? so I collected a 
pile of neglected Golden Age mysteries and a pot 
of herbal tea and retired to bed to spend the day 
in my jammies reading and nursing my cold.

One of the mysteries was Michael Gilbert's _A 
Long Journey Home_, implausible as hell but a 
thundering good read. In it, the impossibly 
competent hero manages (among other things) to 
induce three Bad Guys to chase him across a bog 
on Dartmoor. Hero knows where to put his feet; 
Bad Guys do not. All three of the Bad Guys fall 
into the bog and drown quite horribly in mud. Tada! Revenge.

This struck me (as I sipped my herbal tea) as a 
useful Lenten riff to play with.

Each of us rises out of mud into deeper mud, if 
we're doing this business right. That is, as we 
mend our own wounded souls, we venture deeper 
into our own personal hells, whatever they are, 
and the journey is a fearful one.  It's like 
mining for sorrow, because the only way to deal 
properly with sorrow is to get it out into the 
sunlight where God and human love can wash it away.

But it's as scary as making that dash through a 
swamp in which (we feel) drowning is a small 
misstep away. We've been taught from the get-go 
that ?not okay? is NOT okay, that we're supposed 
to be happy and prosperous, ulltra-competent, 
white of tooth and lean of belly and healthy of 
habit ? and we aren't. Or at least, I'm not.  Don't know about you.

It's one of the places in which we need to turn 
our backs on this world's wisdom and remember its 
opposite: ?Blessed are the? losers,  screwed-up, 
suffering, puzzled and dismayed, searching for 
answers, trying to get their s**t together, 
because we are at least honestly lost and 
therefore can be found and rescued up by God's loving shepherdly care.

We are all of us leaping from hummock to hummock 
across a scary landscape. What we haven't quite 
learned to believe is that we are truly and 
really and completely SAFE, regardless of where we put our feet.

Instead, it's the ultra-competent who have it all 
together and don't need God ? if they really 
exist, which (I'm coming to believe) is unlikely 
? who both satisfy this world's criteria for Got 
It Made and fall in the mudslick of ?failing to 
fail?. For it is in failing that we find 
ourselves scooped up and held in an embrace that 
we have such a hard time in trusting. God sticks 
out a loving foot to trip up the ultra-competent, 
not the screwed-up, because how otherwise can God 
stop them from running away from God?

Running over tussocks, leaping from safe footfall 
to safe footfall, knowing that if I make a 
mistake and hit the mud, I'll be lifted free and clear. Yes, that will do.

I got through about four good Golden Age 
mysteries, a couple of boxes of kleenex, and huge 
amounts of water during my three code-in-da-head 
days. My upper respiratory tract still feels like 
it's draped in spanish moss, but I am on the mend.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt her spirit.
She knows she at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
I'll heed not what men say,
But labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.





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


From lupa at kos.net  Mon Mar 16 01:33:07 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:33:07 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090316013310.3DC681A8E10@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

Taking a week off. Back next weekend.

Molly




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


From lupa at kos.net  Sun Mar 22 20:34:33 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:34:33 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090322203446.E38E41B80FA@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

The Bowl

I chose my glass carefully, taking sheets of coloured, transparent 
fusible glass and layering one on top of another until I got the 
colour I wanted for this piece, which was to be a birthday present to 
my daughter-in-love. I wanted a rich deep crimson and found glass 
that would give me that. I made a pattern from a sheet of paper, 
first cutting it square and then rounding off the corners; we 
measured the pattern and Linda, the store owner, cut off the right 
amount for my project, two 8-inch squares.

I'm not very good a cutting glass yet, but this was simple enough; it 
was a good chance for me to practice, anyway. It's mostly a matter of 
confidence. Glass is such *hard* stuff. You cut it by scoring the 
surface with a carbide roller and then snapping off the scored part 
with pliers. I rounded off the corners of both pieces of red glass, 
getting a little better and a little more confident with each cut, 
and then I ground the pieces down until they conformed with each 
other and with the pattern. There.

Next: cutting up the dichroic glass. This is wondrous (and extremely 
expensive) stuff: glass reflecting two different colours. I had clear 
dichroic to play with, and the colours it would reflect would depend 
on the coloured glass it sat on -- but these colours would be 
completely unpredictable. That's part of the fun. Getting more and 
more confident with the cutter, I scored and broke my dichroic into 
19 squarish bits and made a design: four bits in each rounded-off 
corner and five in the centre. I glued everything together, thinking 
loving thoughts about this bowl's recipient.

And then went on to make two other fused/dichroic dishes using the 
same rounded-square pattern, one in a gentle mauve and one in soft 
green, and then a clear plate (no dichroic) edged with the red and 
mauve trimmings from the first two. And then it was time to stop. But 
my cutting had improved immeasurably.

Later, Linda fired my projects in the shop kiln until the stacked 
glasses fused, and then she put the fused flat plates over moulds and 
fired them again until the glass softened and slumped into or around 
the molds, and then we were done. One crimson flanged bowl, two 
shallow plates (mauve, green), and one candleholder (clear with red 
and mauve tips). It wasn't until I picked the projects up that I knew 
what they would look like, other than very generally. Fused glass is 
like that; there's a certain uncertainty about it. That's one of the 
things I like.

I'm learning about glass, mostly about respecting its character. 
There are things you can't ask of it, because it just won't do them. 
You cannot, for example, cut a circle out of glass and pop it out, 
regardless of what happens in the movies. You cannot ask it to give 
you an interior right angle -- that's not going to happen. You have 
to work with its properties, respecting its nature. At best, you can 
coax it into fairly gentle curves, but it really wants to snap along 
a straight line.

You cannot ask glass to stick to solder; it won't. You have to stick 
something to the glass for the solder to adhere to -- copper foil 
with an adhesive backing -- and solder, in turn, has its own 
properties. You have to respect the ways in which glass expands and 
contracts in firing or your piece may shatter. You have to take care 
in the rate of heating and cooling.

You may be the creator, but glass is your co-creator. You may develop 
tremendous skill, but the glass still demands your understanding and 
wisdom, simply because it is glass.

I had great spiritual fun with this; it made me understand a little 
better how God, in dealing with us, is tremendously skillful and 
creative, but is still working with us as we are, where we are, 
because we are God's co-creators. We can choose to co-create in 
lovely or hideous ways. We have that freedom, which is in our nature, 
as the tendency to break in straight lines is in glass's nature, as a 
drop of melted solder wants to form a sphere. The chances are 
excellent that however we turn out, we're going to be imperfect and 
unpredictable, and that's quite all right, because imperfection and 
unpredictability can be extraordinarily beautiful.

But unlike glass, we get a say in the matter. We can choose painful 
self-insight or willful self-ignorance. We can choose to be loving or 
insensitive in our dealings with others. We can choose power and 
control or humility and poverty of spirit. We can choose to accept 
grace or refuse it. And God respects our choices.

After I picked up my projects (which turned out beautifully), I 
stopped in at the local glassblowers' gallery; I really am finding 
this glass-stuff fascinating. I watched a young man skillfully heat 
and shape and play with glowing blobs of molten glass, adroitly 
cupping and turning and rolling and nipping them, working quickly and 
gracefully, clearly knowing exactly what he was doing. The shop was 
full of magnificent pieces, sculptures in glass; I thought they must 
have been molded, but no, every piece was hand-blown. Stunning stuff. 
Any creation of beauty must, I think, make God smile -- if nothing 
else, with fellow feeling.

I thought: God gives us choices. God lets us pick what matters to us, 
instead of insisting on giving us what God had planned. So instead of 
wrapping the crimson bowl up as a gift, I offered all four pieces to 
my daughter-in-love and let her pick the one she liked best.

She chose the mauve.

(For Linda, Jill, Meghan, and Yolanda; and for Georgiana, with love)



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


From lupa at kos.net  Sun Mar 29 21:28:31 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:28:31 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090329212838.8FD8B1CA89B@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

The Singing Lesson

I drove home along the parkway, keeping the river company. It's a 
mystery, this river; it's both formidable -- with five Great Lakes 
behind it, how could it be otherwise? -- but also intricate, 
intimate, mysterious as it laps away at its smooth soft-gold marshes 
and hundreds of islands and islets.

I vocalized for a bit as I drove, as my singing teacher Marie wants 
me to do, making extremely silly noises (something I can only do 
unselfconsciously while I'm driving) and then singing the piece we 
were working on on Wednesday, one of Aaron Copland's better bits. 
After getting me to start thinking like a musician ("*why* that 
double forte?"), Marie told me to sing the piece straight through and 
then say the first thing that came into my head.

So I sang it, and said "Mudge."

Marie looked a little startled, which was perfectly understandable. 
So I gave her the briefest explanation possible: that I belonged to 
an international Anglican e-community, and that long long ago we'd 
had a sort of joint electronic vision of a picnic by the River, with 
much love and sweet silliness (we were good at that) and grace 
abounding. One member of that community was a man we all loved very 
dearly. And  just about a year ago, he dropped dead at the age of only 60.

His name was Andrew, but he claimed to be a curmudgeon, so we 
nicknamed him the Mudge.

It's hard to explain this to people who haven't experienced it, that 
you could learn to see into another person's soul via modem, but I 
have  sisters and brothers out there whom I've never met. Others, 
when we do meet, turn directly into the best relatives a person could 
have (hi Ginga! hi Capers!)

I had, in fact, met the Mudge, if only briefly, but that wouldn't 
have mattered. What mattered was the sense of connection, reaching 
from northern Florida to the rainy Northwest to Ontario, where I am, 
to South Africa and England and ... and ... and ... What mattered was 
that we were, and still are, a company of saints. Crabby, 
disputatious saints, I'd agree, but saints nonetheless.

We knew, when he died, that we'd merely transferred a member to the 
other company, the one on the other side of the River. The one where 
the picnic by the silver water was already under way, with other 
beloveds from our community. They are waiting to welcome us home.

So remembering the Mudge and heeding Marie's lesson, I sang softly to 
myself as I drove alongside this great river, hearing Copland's 
spare, prickly, beautiful piano accompaniment in my head:

Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God.

Mudge, we miss you. Give my love to the Muttster and Mary Jane and 
Carol and....

In memoriam
Andrew Auld
born into larger life 27 March 2008



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