Kidd: Forgiveness

Kidd: Forgiveness

“People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard.”— Sue Monk Kidd in The Secret Life of Bees.

If someone has harmed us, we think about them all the time and what we would like to do to them: expose them. They live rent-free in our heads and, in essence, become our higher power, our God.

We do not want this person to be our God, our higher power. That brings us back to start the work of forgiveness. Yes, for me, it is backbreaking work. Forgiveness is not forgetting.

There are things we should never forget: the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, slavery, abuse, 9/ 11, Hurricanes Camille, Frederic, Ivan, Katrina, this war in Ukraine, and now more than we can name.

Walter Brueggemann1 writes about forgiveness, especially from what we learn in the Old Testament. He notes that forgiveness is impossible in a system of deeds-consequence when deeds have an unbreakable, tight, predictable connection to consequences with no way out. This is the law, and if you break it, this is what will happen to you. Amen. This is the basis of much religious preaching of “hell, fire, and damnation,” trying to frighten people into a moral life.

Brueggemann believes forgiveness is only possible when we realize the astonishing readiness of God continually to reach beyond deeds and consequences to offer us unlimited restoration and extravagant forgiveness.
 There is nothing, nothing that we can do for which God does not forgive us, and God calls us to do the same.

When we start to lead a life of pardoning and newness, we begin to see the world not through our grievances, but through gratitude.

It is a new life, a different life. We saw it in Nelson Mandela, who forgives his guards for his 27 years of imprisonment as he walks out of prison.

He tells others who harbor resentments and grievances, “If I do not forgive them, I am still in prison.”

Buddhists call it the Great Compassion.

1Walter Brueggemann, “The Impossible Possibility of Forgiveness,” Journal of Preachers, Pentecost 2015, pp. 8-17.

Charleston: we are not done yet

Charleston: We are not done yet

"We are not done yet. We may count our progress in inches. We may swim against the deep tides of greed and hate, but we are not done yet. Even if we do not live to see it all, we will be content to be the inspiration, to give all we have to free our world from fear."—Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Page.

Bishop Charleston gives us encouragement during difficult times when we are discouraged. This is why God constantly calls us to community. We feel we have lost our connection to God when our lights are dim. We think we have accomplished nothing. We believe we are failures. Yet, there are others in our community whose lights are on, who are more connected to God, and who can encourage and support us until we see a different picture. They are like Simon of Cyrene, briefly carrying our cross. They are like the paralytic's friends, lifting him through the rooftop to Jesus. Then, in turn, as we heal, it will be our turn to be the encourager.

Often, people come for spiritual direction or meet with spiritual friends who have been burned out or feel their life or ministry is not accomplishing what they had hoped. Our job as spiritual friends is to show each other where God is working in our lives, and how important it is to continue inspiring each other, remembering that we may not see the results. But unfortunately, the results may be apparent much later, long after we have lived our lives and our names have been forgotten.

As I grow older, I more vividly remember the people, teachers, grandparents, co-workers, and friends who encouraged, supported, and never gave up on me. But unfortunately, most of them are dead, so I can only thank them by trying to pay it forward and encouraging others as they did to me.

So today, I share with you Jon Sweeney's recent biography of Phyllis Tickle, Phyllis Tickle, A Life, where he shares how Phyllis was a major encourager for him, myself, and so many others.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Windows

Windows

“A Window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”—Saul Leiter, artist and photographer.

 “View From My Window” is a social media group that calls me out of bed each morning as I long to refocus my life from more than the world outside my own window. Stunning photography from all over the globe enlarges my connection to universal beauty from Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and other parts of North America. Flowers of every possible species, forests, elephants, bobcats, oceans, tidal pools, mountain ranges, snow in Austin, Texas, and northern lights in Iceland and Alaska wake me daily to beauty beyond my normal vision.

My experience is that being in or seeing nature is one of my best ways to connect to God. Each morning, I take a visual journey into the presence of creation in all its splendor beyond the bounds of my own home to someone else’s view that I will probably never meet. Each morning, I see a part of the beauty of the outdoors that I would have never seen in my lifetime. Occasionally, I share the view outside my window of woodpeckers and cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and blue jays, who visit the feeder beyond my floor-to-ceiling window, taking up almost a whole wall in my office at home.

However, my favorite view is when my granddaughter or grandson comes by to wave and say hello with a dog they walk, or when my daughter leaves taped outside my window a colorful “I love you” hand-drawn message with lots of hearts. Another favorite view is my husband going out in all kinds of weather to put out bird food, so I can see my avian neighbors every morning.

I rarely left my house during the two years of our long pandemic. The view from my window, where I spent most of the day, was my connection to the outside world. I am so fortunate that my view encompasses much of nature, where Parker Palmer tells us that the plants photosynthesize our nervous energy into peace, passing all understanding.

Now, I connect to the views from people’s windows from all around the world. Consequently, I can now begin my day with a larger worldview.