article on how the media can’t seem to get the Pope’s resignation right. Worth the read.
On Forgiveness…
Following a wrong against us a crucial part of the recovery is the attempt to make sense of what has happened, to provide an explanation for the vulnerability and pain we’ve experienced. We see ourselves with all our complexities, our history, the interwoven moments of our life and within that fabric we see the damage done. We look for an explanation and simple ones are easy to find. Among them is to see the one who we believe has wronged us in one dimensional, cartoonish, form. We are a tapestry full of subtleties but the person who has hurt us is a piece of cardboard, simply and easily defined by what they did to us. The story we seek to construct to help us move through our experience of hurt and pain is made so much easier if the good guys are completely good and the bad guys completely evil, especially if we are the good guy. Yet this won’t suffice when it comes to forgiveness.
The person we believe hurt us is, like us, multidimensional, a person with complexities, a story, a history before they encountered us and a lived experience after us. Part of the process of forgiveness, and it is often a process more than a moment, is to become aware of the larger story, the context of the person who has harmed us. Doing us forces us to humanize them, to see them as more than a simple villian. To forgive a stereotype we have created can sometimes be no forgiveness at all and even a kind of revenge. Our pride, wounded, strikes back at the evil done by making the one who harmed us something less than a person and our words of forgiveness an act of reasserting power over them and keeping them in a place of perpetual obligation to us. Forgiveness is much deeper and harder than this.
Forgiveness, in its most authentic sense, requires us, over time, to rediscover and uphold the image of God which is present even in the most evil of people. This is not about excusing actions but rather about seeing the larger context, the humanity of the person who has wronged us and and hoping, if at all possible, that our refusal to destroy in return even if it is warranted will somehow, some way, help restore the person whose evil against us is a symptom of our shared human frailty, illness, and mortality. This is difficult and the greater the amount of harm that is done to does only increases the difficulty. Yet it is even in this great difficulty that we ourselves are restored and healed. It is in this great struggle that we discover the depths of the love and grace of God for us and the whole world even as we ourselves become partakers of it as well.
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On the Way Home from Church…
I take the tab out of my collar as I leave the highway. The guy is by the stoplight. The one with the cardboard sign that says “Homeless Vet, Anything Will Help.” I have no idea who he is but I know who I am. And I don’t want him to see the collar of a Priest. It’s just too complicated, the guilt, the feelings, the expectations. I don’t know who this guy is. I don’t know where he comes from. I tell myself it makes no sense to give this guy money for the liquor store down the street so he can get into more of what got him on this exit ramp in the first place. And I do give to the local mission, really, and he can go there if he needs to. So my tab is in my pocket and I try not to make eye contact as I drive by. I pray that the light doesn’t change just before I pass so I have to look him in the eye. Because I don’t know who he is, but I know who I am and I still feel like somehow I left Christ on the sidewalk.
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There is Much…
trouble and difficulty in these times and yet it seems that at these times the Church must avoid the temptation to hunker down and try to ride out the storm. Troubled times are times of opportunity because people, stripped of the normal props that focus their lives on the perpetual here and now, are, by necessity, looking beyond themselves for something true, real, and good. If we are not out “there” engaging real people with real truth we will cease to be a part of the dialogue. Someone very wise once said that hidden lamps are useless.
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In Some Parts…
of the Orthodox Church in the United States there are a surplus of Priests. Now this could be seen as a problem. Not enough places for Priests. Those who have parishes staying on, recent seminarians placed over more senior clerics because their particular jurisdiction has invested in their education and needs to get a return, and more than a few serving in the potential never land of bi-vocational life. Or it could be seen as an opportunity to envision new ministries, even non traditional ones, and release the pent up energies of “excess” clergy in new ways. Certainly the demand for what Orthodoxy offers is not limited to currently existing parishes and just because we have an ancient faith doesn’t mean we can’t anticipate the future and actually be prepared for it when it arrives. The key just might lie in challenging and supporting the “excess” Priests to think outside the box, not the Faith, but the box of our limited horizons.
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People May Argue…
about the spiritual lives of the people who wrote our nation’s foundational documents but there is one thing I believe they did understand. They understood that humans have a propensity for bad behavior and selfishness and people with power even more. So they built in deliberate inefficiencies into the government they envisioned, things like separation of powers, a limited vision of federal government, and checks and balances designed to make the process sometimes messy. They did this because they understood that messy and contentious government is still better than efficient government in the hands of one person. The whole idea is that one person or group doesn’t always get everything their way. People may not like this, they sure will yell about it, but they are free to yell and that’s the point.
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The Solutions…
to so many of our problems may lie in Christians actually being Christians. Passing laws is just easier.
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There Will Always…
be things in the Church worthy of complaint. Yet to complain without presenting something better as an alternative is to simply add to the existing problem. In our culture there are a myriad of complainers and very few problem solvers. Before you complain have a solution in mind. If you don’t then keep silent until you do so at least you won’t make things worse.
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Scripture and Tradition…
via Byzantine, Texas. Worth reading.
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St. John the Forerunner…
is a small church in rural Wisconsin, the oldest Orthodox parish in the state and if no one told you where it was you’d probably not find it. Still there was a joy there this morning, the joy of people who come from miles away to worship and keep this venerable parish alive.
Yes, there are fancy parishes all over the large cities, parishes with every convenience. Yet, in Huron, Wisconsin, truly a wide spot in the road, it costs something to attend liturgy. Mileage, time, convenience. it all adds up. The people who were there this morning had to want to be there. God knows the reasons but there was effort involved.
I think God remembers such things and perhaps one day this tiny parish will flourish again, so full of people, as one of the regulars said, that they worried about the choir loft collapsing under their weight. Until that day the bell rings, everyone who can tries to sing, and God is glorified in this little temple where the farms start to give way to the northern forests.
May all the good that comes from God be with them. I hope to be back some day.
