Forgiveness and Resentments 490

Forgiveness and resentment 490

“Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Jesus said to him Not seven times but, I tell you seventy times seven!” Matthew 18:22

         Today I encountered a woman on retreat with so much anger it was difficult to be around her.  Her body language, her speech cried out through tiny holes in a thick invisible wall surrounding her about a tremendous pain caused by once being abandoned. Almost every conversation was related to her unjust suffering which resulted from a broken  relationship fifteen years ago.  That person was no longer  in her life but was still profoundly hurting her.  

 She also was primed, looking for, waiting for another resentment to happen.  One had to walk on egg shells around her for fear of saying something that might offend her.   I got caught in that trap and then tried to ease the pain I had caused her in a brief encounter, but to no avail.  My amends went coolly unreceived.  She was unforgiving. It was so uncomfortable to be around her. She was  difficult to love, to see the Christ in her.

As I reflect on the encounter, I see, but  for the Grace of God,  I could have been stuck, paralyzed in the same place she was in when I had been wounded.  Why has God allowed some to heal from most of our hurt relationships, but has not brought healing to this child of his?  I learned from this woman so much.. so painfully.  I learned that until I can forgive someone and go on with my life, that person I am resenting is still harming me.    I can grieve that broken trust, that lost relationship, but unless I go on with my life, I am paralyzed.

 I also learned from this woman how I can harm others with the best of intentions in my own  humanness.    I can reverse the tables and see how others can do the same to me.  I honestly believe that most people do not intend to hurt others.  May I remember this weekend and this very wounded woman and pray that we both can forgive others.  I saw an image of someone I do not want to be.

 I also remember how the prayer our God gave to us tells us that part of  the condition of our being forgiven is forgiving others.  I hope to remember this woman, and hope that it will be a reminder to me of what happens when I no longer forgive.  May we both be changed.

Joanna joannaseibert.com   

Death and Relationship

Death and Relationships

“We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone.”  Marilynne Robinson.

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When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an amazingly loving relationship with someone else and then abruptly take it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence but more like a comma. The relationship still goes on.

Our loved ones are still in relationship with us but in a way that we don’t yet understand. We can sometimes feel their presence. We often feel and know their prayers. Frederick Buechner has written about doing active imagination with those we love who have died in his book, A Crazy, Holy, Grace. We talk with them in the silence of our mind but we often can still feel their presence supporting and loving us just as they did before when they were alive.

I also remind friends that those we love are now with us, at all times, beside us, again in some form we do not understand. When they were alive, we were only present with them when we saw them physically. They are now always with us closer than we can explain.

Joanna joannaseibert.com.

Guest Writer: Burton, Love of Jesus

Guest Writer: Larry Burton, Love of Jesus

“I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart.” George William Cooke, I’ve got the Joy, Joy, Joy Joy, 1925.

 Memories are a way of discovering where God has been active in our lives.  Of course, we have to be willing to bring them to mind, both the good and the not so good.  Summer brings its own particular set of memories. 

This summer I am reminded of summer camp.  My mind easily traverses the years back to the 1950s and a particular summer camp in Southern Indiana.  There, amidst the rolling hills, rivers, caves, and farm land was Rivervale.  It was a church camp, and every summer we went there for at least a week.  Sometimes we went with our friends, other times we were reunited with those we saw only once a year.  Looking back, I can see what a sacred place it was (and I am pretty sure it still is)! 

Thinking back, I realize that at Rivervale’s very center was the Tabernacle, a huge, open-sided building large enough to see at least a couple of hundred—maybe three hundred—people.  That it was at the geographical center was not a mistake, for that was where we started and ended each day, with prayers, scripture, a brief homily, and singing.  Always there was singing.  “I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart,” we would sing time after time.  As many memories as I have of the wonders of nature, the gifts of friendship, the wisdom of the elders, what I remember most is the physical pleasure of singing, and the physical sensation of having the “love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart.”  I can feel that still.

That memory haunts me—as it may haunt some of my friends from 60 years ago.  Though we were young, they were still spiritual friends; friends with whom I explored what it meant to follow Jesus, what it meant to see God in each and every part of Creation.  And now, all these years later, in a time when my heart breaks for those who are separated, abused, used, lonely, frightened, angry, frustrated, and worst of all despairing.  It is the memory of church camp, of that physical tingling in my chest as I sang…as WE sang…”I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart,” that still gives me hope.  I hope it does for my friends from long ago, too, because God was surely, and IS surely, at work down in the hearts of God’s people.

Larry Burton

Joanna joannaseibert.com