My ex is visiting town to spend time with son two, attend the school play (the kids did great. The play, however, is not great, and the sound people need to learn to turn down the mikes on trained singers). The “fun’ bit, for the boy, was that the music pages were printed out of order… to the point where his music teacher, sitting in the chair next to him, said “pages are more important than bowing“.
But, from the second she came down, we have been in the land of snark.
Today this resonates. I want to curse the fig tree, and scourge out the temple.
12On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
15Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.
20In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 22Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. 23Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. 24So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
25“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”
My household is all male: may daughter is married and lives in the frozen northern prairies, while we survive in Dunedin (which gets the occaisional snow, not feet of it. There is a reptilian reason I do not live in Canada. I like being warm). The amount of anger in the house last night… was defused by humour.
But this morning I need to forgive her for yesterday, and beg forgiveness for when I entered the land of the snark. Because there are no fruit there. In fact, the play reminded me of this: Sweeney Todd gets his revenge, at the cost of his love and his life.
Living in sarcasm and snark is attractive to the verbal and clear eyed, as a bleak position is currently the accurate one to take of the world. But down that path lies despair. I must not enter the land of snark.