Let me tell you something about the process.

Each Sabbath Blessing starts with something I call the hook. Whatever it is, it almost always has to be *real*; that's the first rule. (Some fictionalization permitted, usually to keep myself out of trouble.) I can't invent the hook; it has to be given to me; once or twice I've been "given" a fictional situation, but usually whatever it is jumps me in the course of an ordinary day. The hook can be anything--a bunch of lilacs, a view, a storm, hanging out the wash, whatever. I always know when I've got it, though; it feels like the hook.

And then there's the idea. The hook has to tie into something --an insight, a bit of theology, whatever, so that I can get beyond the real and immediate into the universal. That's another Rule. There also has to be an under-feeling or subtext of my own, but another Rule is that the subtext has to stay subtextual. Whatever personal thing I'm bringing to the piece should stay firmly in the background. When it strays into the foreground, as it must sometimes, I feel mildly embarrassed.

So then, given these three ingredients, I sit down (usually on Friday, but sometimes on Saturday morning) and the piece flows through my fingertips on the keyboard and onto the screen. Often I'll describe the hook and then stop and go do something else for a while, while the idea forms and swirls and takes shape, and then I'll come back and finish the piece, 700 words give or take a few (another Rule). I like to brood each piece like a hen on her egg, going over and revising. Even so, it always amazes me how many typos get through. When I'm reasonably pleased with the thing, I copy it from WordPerfect into a Eudora post and ship it out to the four lists that the Sabbath Blessing goes to, always by Saturday noon. The deadline is another Rule. The final Rule is that the version I save to disk is the one that's reflected to me via St. Sam's.

Okay; that's the process. This week, it didn't work.

Dammit, I have managed a Sabbath Blessing every single particular Saturday since September 1995, with only one exception: I did not produce one on October 13, 1995, the day my marriage broke up after my now-ex-husband tried to bean me with a dining room chair. I think that's reasonable. The last couple of weeks have been difficult, but difficult days never stopped me before. Trust me, I have pounded out Sabbath Blessings when I was practically cross-eyed with pain or grief or whatever. I am a professional writer, after all. I make my living with these fingers, this keyboard: the words scroll out ever-reliably, extremely swiftly, and usually fairly skilfully across this very screen, always, on demand, without fail. That's something I'm extremely proud of.

But not today.

I had the hook--some garden anemones that had managed to root in a street gutter, how adorably picturesque! I had the idea--"bloom where you're planted". I had the subtext--aomething about blooming in hard and desert places, something I know a thing or two about. I got perhaps 300 words into it. And then it happened, that moment any creative person dreads. I have heard it described as the sensation you get when you push down on the gas pedal and nothing happens, and the car gradually slows to a halt.

Not supposed to write about blooming anemones this week, are we? Okay. Well then, what are we supposed to write about, God?

Silence.

Oh.

So I call up my friend Caro, who knows me better than anyone except maybe God and my mother, and she laughed and said, "Aha! About time." And she said, "Maybe now it's time you admitted you're human." And she said, "You do realize, don't you, that this is God taking your perfectionism down a peg?"

Oh.

Okay, I produce these things week after week partly to guard against my own tendency to put things off: if I HAVE to produce a piece for a Saturday noon deadline, I will, but if it's optional, the chances are I'll forget or get distracted. But also, to be absolutely honest, they feed my ego. I've taken an inordinant amount of pride in pushing through whatever mire or piece of wilderness I'm wandering in, to get the Sabbath Blessing out come hell or high water. And yes, that's sheer vanity. I like knowing they're waited for. I like the positive feedback. I like the feeling that they're good pieces and sometimes actually help people.

God says, "you don't have to meet that Saturday noon deadline week after week after week; that's your imperative, not Mine. You made these rules, not Me. That's your perfectionism, and only I am perfect. It is really enough to notice the anemone in the gutter, and to notice it joyfully and lovingly. And if the Sabbath Blessing is late, maybe it's time you explained a thing or two. Maybe Caro's right. You're human. It's okay to let it show."

So there we are. This piece wrote itself in about 15 minutes, very happily, because it is what I am supposed to write, not what I wanted to write. Okay, Lord: Your call. Can I shorten it to 700 words? No? Okay, okay, I'll stop with the Rules. Now, shall we run it through the spell check and send it out, please, so I can get the laundry out on the line? Okay?

Here goes.