From lupa at kos.net  Sun Sep  6 22:15:13 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:15:13 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090906231529.C92523A3514@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

MS Word

I still miss WordPerfect, which was my word-processing program for 
donkey's years, but it is gone and MS Word is what I'm stuck with.

I've just written a term paper for the distance course in learning 
disabilities that I'm taking from Athabasca University, and the 
danged program keeps shifting margins on me, paragraph by paragraphy. 
Athabasca expects me to use the American Psychological Associations 
style guide, which is firm on the margin issues: 1" (2.54 cm) on each 
side. So those margins have to be fixed. And since MS Word, unlike 
WordPerfect, does not allow the user to search for and delete 
formatting codes (which is why I loved WordPerfect), this has meant 
going through 19 pages (double spaced) and patiently repositioning 
the left margin and initial indent at the beginning of every single 
ever-loving paragraph. There may have been an easier way to do this, 
and no doubt someone will tell me, but only after I'm finished. Which 
I am, almost.

<sigh>

The only good thing about this situation is that it's given me to 
think about the issue of independence. MS Word is acting 
independently in fooling around with my margins. MS Word is so 
"helpful" sometimes it's practically crippling. Please, program, if I 
want those margins shifted, I will tell you. I promise.

But isn't this what we do with God, sometimes? Decide that we know 
what's best and proceed without a check-in with the Person in authority?

I mean, it's just so *obvious* what needs to be done, and we don't 
need to trouble the Deity's little head about it. We'll just go ahead 
and make the changes or fix the situation or the person without 
dragging God into it.  God's got better things to do with God's time.

Besides, if we dragged God into it, we'd have God all over our own 
personal landscape, which is a bit messy, and who wants God to see 
the way we really are? Another good reason to focus on fixing the 
situation or the person is that it allows us to evade focusing on the 
changes we really should be making to ourselves. Very tempting.

It doesn't really occur to us that (a) this means we think we're 
smarter than God, and (b) that's really pretty insulting to God, as 
well as being extremely bad theology.

Of course we know (at least in theory) that we should be turning the 
person or the situation over to God and let God handle it, and 
sometimes we can and sometimes we don't seem to be able to -- usually 
because by letting go of the person or situation, we admit defeat and 
we lose control, and who wants to do that?

Or sometimes it's because we truly do see a situation or a person as 
wrong or at least seriously misguided, and perhaps damaging to third 
parties, and we figure that we're the person to stand up and name the 
problem. And indeed, sometimes that is what needs to happen, as 
Martin Niemoller pointed out. But having named the problem, we may 
still have to turn it over, which means (again) admitting defeat, 
instead of trusting that somehow God is going to get all of this 
stuff worked out in God's own good time.

Because trust is what this is all about. Our own trust can be so 
deeply damaged that independence feels like the only safe place to 
be. If we've got trust issues, we may over-trust and get terribly 
hurt, or we may not trust at all. If we can't trust the people around 
us, then how can we trust a God we can't even see? Especially in a 
world so full of brokenness and pain and outright evil?

It rarely occurs to us that if *everybody* put down the need to win 
and control and meddle and "fix" situations and each other -- if we 
all (or at least a sizeable majority of us) -- simply looked at each 
other in humility and love and trusted God to do the work of healing 
God's Creation, we might find ourselves in a very different space.

MS Word does not trust me to manage my own margins; therefore it 
takes over the job, forgetting that it's only a flippin' program and 
not the boss of me, and in trying to manage me efficiently, it has 
cost me a whole lot of time and completely unnecessary work. But at 
least the margins are fixed.

The left ones, anyway. Maybe I'd better check the right....

(Thank you all for being so patient with me as I struggle to figure 
out what to write next.)
*****************************************
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 Sep 27 21:49:12 2009
From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf)
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:49:12 -0400
Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing
Message-ID: <20090927214920.8AF463D69A2@barracuda.rutabaga.org>

Cheap Grace

Mike preached on cheap grace this morning, beginning with Dietrich 
Bonhoeffer. Grace is free, Mike said, but it isn't cheap.

The standard response is "Huh?" How can anything be both free and not 
cheap? That's our materialistic way of looking at things. Free means 
that I can help myself without payment; not cheap means that the 
payment is going to be substantial, perhaps even a little scary. It 
sounds ominous.

It's long driven me a little batty when someone caused me grief and 
refused to acknowledge the fact, and I've seen quite a bit of this, 
in part because I was trained early on to believe that this is an 
okay way of behaving. You're just supposed to get over it and move 
on, and if you can't do that, you're being a Bad Christian. (The fact 
that this is pure bait for abuse didn't occur to me until quite 
late.) So let's have the Peace without Confession and Absolution 
because we're all such nice people and never hurt others. Yeah, right.

But grace, while a gift from God, carries a hefty price tag: ego. To 
accept that we need grace means accepting that we're sinners, and we 
just don't want to go there. Nor do we want to accept the notion that 
our egos ought to matter a hell of a lot less than our relationships, 
and that self-righteousness (an ego-thing, if ever there was one) is 
one of Whatever-We-Call-It's best ways of damaging relationships, 
because it truly is all about self.

What was a bit of a breakthrough for me, in Mike's sermon, was a 
different understanding of what grace is about. Grace is God's 
presence in the work of healing and redemption, but God, whose 
manners are quite lovely, only does this if we give God permission, 
which means acknowledging that we actually *need* grace and inviting it in.

In a sin-damaged relationship, grace gets shut out, because one or 
more parties don't want to admit the need for it, because that means 
<gulp!> Not Feeling Good About Themselves. So if the party of the 
first part doesn't accept any responsibility for the sin, it loads 
the entire price of forgiveness on the party of the second part, 
which is meta-sin of the first order. This is why scapegoating is 
such horribly dangerous and damaging behaviour. It's a form of 
spiritual snatch-and-grab: I get to feel good about myself and you 
get to do all the hard stuff of suffering and repentance and 
forgiveness with no help from me.

Which is itself crazy-making, especially when we insist on our 
victims suffering in silence, because otherwise our egos might get 
bruised. Happens all the time.

But ultimately, I think we do end up paying the price of grace, one 
way or the other. Worshipping the ego's need to feel good about 
itself, regardless of reality, is a way towards spiritual oblivion, 
something we'll no doubt finally figure out when we face our Maker. 
That will cost heavily.

But if we can accept that we're screwed up and therefore that we 
screw up, we set can ego down in the corner, where it belongs, or 
send it out to play on the 401 or whatever, and we can actually turn 
gratefully into God's love like a small child turning into her 
parents' arms. One aspect of this is setting down the egotistical 
notion that we screwed ourselves up with no outside help, and picking 
up the humble notion that being screwed up is the normal human 
condition. Over-responsibility is also ego (my favourite flavour).

A free gift, with a substantial price tag. But worth it, worth it.

Thanks, Mike.



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