[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

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.





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