Forgiveness Challenge - Day 1

 

I've already written a bit about the Tutu 30-day Global Forgiveness Challenge, but I've also decided to blog about it as I go through it.  I'm hoping that this will be a way to keep myself accountable to the process.  It is a habit of mine to get all excited about a project or idea at the beginning but not follow all the way through to the end.  So I'm making this agreement with myself and with anyone who reads this - I commit to the 30-day challenge, to spending 15 minutes a day reading and doing the exercises, and I commit to being open to whatever learning, change, or growth may occur as a result of taking this challenge.

Today was day one.  Just watching Desmond Tutu on the short video makes me smile.  How anyone who has seen the things that he has seen can be filled with so much joy is a miracle to me.  I remember hearing him speak at Sewanee when I was in college and being blown away by his infectious laughter and his amazing spirit.  Words fail me, but he is the most ALIVE person I have ever met.  I am grateful for this opportunity to learn from him.

Today we are asked to write down what we hope to get from the forgiveness challenge.  There are a few people in my life whom I have not fully forgiven, one of whom is no longer alive, and I would like to work through the process of letting go of any remaining hurt, anger, and pain.  I would also like to learn a process for forgiving myself not only for the big things I've done wrong, but also for the every day mistakes I've made or hurts I've caused.  Self-forgiveness does not come easily to me, and I think my life would be much better if it did.  I also hope to learn some concrete practices that I can use myself and share with others.

Thanks to those of you who will join me on this journey.  If you want to take the challenge, you can find it at www.forgivenesschallenge.com.  

"Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us."

Tree Stump Garden Update

Back in March I wrote in my post, Redeem, about the tree stump garden that I pass when I walk.  Well, last Saturday I was walking  the 2.7 mile loop and as I got closer to the tree stump, I saw two young men and an older woman standing near the stump.  It was the lady who tends the stump garden!  I was so excited finally to meet her.  I stopped, took off my head phones and asked, "Are you the one who plants these?"  She said yes and I said, "Thank you.  Whenever I pass them they bring me joy.  I've even written a blog post about them."  She was taken by surprise, not realizing the impact that her bit of gardening has had on passersby.  Clearly the two young men had also stopped to talk to her about the little garden. 

Sometimes I read the word "fangirl" on Facebook, and I guess I had a little fangirl moment.  I didn't think to ask for her name or to take her picture with the plants, but I was so grateful that I had finally had the opportunity to thank her for the seeds of joy that she has planted.  The week of Easter there were even little Easter eggs attached to the plants.  Each time I pass it there is something new, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face and a sense of delight to my day.  Yesterday I snapped a quick picture of the little garden thriving in the stump of the dead tree.  Is that resurrection or what?

Forgiveness Challenge

When I was in seminary we read Desmond Tutu's book, No Future Without Forgiveness, in one of my theology classes.  It was one of my favorite books from my time in seminary.  Sadly, reading it showed what a poor global citizen I am/was because I knew so little about what had happened during apartheid in South Africa.  It was quite a learning for me.  What caught my attention and changed me, though, was reading about the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  My professor told me not to idealize the situation there and explained that all was not sweetness and light in the aftermath of the TRC process.  No process is without flaws.  What astounded me was that it was even tried at all and that some amount of healing came out of it. 

On Saturday as I was preparing to preach about Doubting Thomas, I saw a post on a friend's timeline on FaceBook about a 30-Day Forgiveness Challenge sponsored by Archbishop Tutu and his daughter, Mpho.  Together they have written a book called, The Book of Forgiving: the Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World.  I can't wait to read it.  The Tutus know about forgiveness and they have  wisdom to share.  As I understand it, people who sign up for the challenge will receive an email each of the 30 days with stories, exercises, interviews, etc.  I signed up.

This time when I preached the story from John's gospel about Jesus' appearance to his disciples sans Thomas, I paid close attention to what Jesus said to them.  "As the Father has sent me, so I send you...  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.  If you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  Jesus sent them out to forgive.  That's what he did.  He forgave.  That's what he sent them to do.  That's what he calls his followers to do now. 

I struggle with forgiveness.  I love to talk about it, think about it, hear stories about it.  When I'm faced with actually engaging in it, though, I become uncomfortable, often preferring to nurse my wounds or resentments rather than do the hard work of letting them go.  I also struggle with forgiving too easily, before I've really done the hard work, saying that I've forgiven, but I haven't.  There's a decision to forgive and then there's the actual process of forgiving. 

I am hopeful that I will learn through this 30-day challenge.  I love that it's taking place during the Easter season.  Last year for Lent I chose to do a forgiveness practice in which I wrote down 40 names of people I needed to forgive on slips of paper.  Each morning I drew out a name and prayed for that person, examining my feelings of hurt or resentment and asking myself if I was ready to let them go.  This 30-day challenge seems to be the perfect follow up to the Lenten discipline, and an ideal practice for Easter when we remember that Jesus didn't rise from the dead to condemn the world but to forgive.  What would it be like to have a little less condemnation and judgment in the world and a whole lot more forgiveness?

I want to do my part.  Will you join me?

Holy Week Beginning

Yesterday was Palm Sunday.  The beginning of Holy Week.  The week we remember Jesus' journey to the cross and beyond.  This weekend my students and I helped serve lunch to neighbors in need at St. Paul's in Newport News.  Pictured is the altar there prepared for Palm Sunday.  Students and I then went on a retreat to Yorktown where we spent time being.  Walking outside, eating ice cream, talking, sitting around a fire, sharing a meal.  We went to the Palm Sunday service at Grace Church yesterday morning.  Connie Jones' homily was about noise, all the noise that Jesus must have heard as he entered Jerusalem and went through the week, the cheers that turned into jeers as he walked to his death.  And yet, Jesus got more and more centered even in the midst of the noisy turmoil.  Connie invited us to find a time each day this week to invite Jesus into our hearts, without expectation of what would happen when we did, and then to accept what Jesus brings us.

Last night, (because there can never be too much church, even this week!) I went back to Grace for their Celtic Service.  It's theme was contradictions or paradox.  The opening prayer was this poem by Malcolm Guite:
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The saviour comes.  But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won.  Too soon they'll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune.  I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple.  Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.

Wow.  This poem really brought Holy Week home for me.  I know how mobs can change, can get caught up in the moment.  It's not far from cheering and praising to shouting, "Crucify him!"  You can watch it at a football game.  But I always struggle because I want to think that I wouldn't have been shouting, "Crucify him!"  I want to think that I would have been with the women at the foot of the cross and that I wouldn't have been turning against him.  This poem, though, brings the story into my own heart.  How many times do I start down the path of good intention - waking up, praying, readying myself for the day and heading out into the world to love God and my neighbor - only to find that my resolve is shaken the first time I get behind a slow driver or someone says a sharp word to me or something doesn't go my way?  Then all that good will flies out the window and I start fussing at the driver or speaking shortly to other people or grumpily complaining in my head about the way things have turned out.

It's hard.  To love our neighbors.  It sounds easy in my house.  But it is hard. 

Will I welcome Jesus when he asks me to love those who differ from me over topics that I care about deeply?  Will I welcome Jesus when he asks me to keep walking through all the noise?   Will I welcome Jesus when he asks me to stop doing things I want to do and start doing things that are much less easy and convenient?  It's so much easier to love the world from within my quiet house.  But Jesus keeps calling me out into the world, into the pain and noise and daily minor irritations that add up.  It is easy to love my neighbor when I'm singing hosanna.  It is hard to love my neighbor when my neighbor wishes me dead.  Or wishes someone I love dead.  Or when my neighbor criticizes and judges me or my loved ones.

My week started with retreat time, time for being, with God, with creation, with students.  I'm filled with the easy feelings, caught up in the singing, "All glory laud and honor, to thee redeemer king."  Come, Jesus.  Come into the "seething holy city of my heart."  Help me to stay faithful as you did.  Help me to find my center as I walk through this week.  Soften my heart to those around me.  "Break my resistance and make me your home."

Winter's Parting Gift

I hate winter.  I have always hated winter.  Ever since I was a little girl, I have dreaded the shortening of the days and the beginning of the cold.  What I really hate is being cold!  Sometimes the chill gets into my bones and I can't get warm.  And then there's the depression that comes when I can't be outside and the days are overcast and everything feels gloomy and bleak. 

A couple of years ago I decided to fight the winter blues in a few ways.  One is with a happy light that I start sitting with in September.  Another is my miracle vitamin drink that helps lift my energy.  And finally I have been trying to find the good things about winter.  Instead of feeling sad because the brightly colored leaves are falling off the trees and won't return until spring, I feel grateful that it's easier to see the sky.  The sun also shines through my windows in the winter time and casts a golden glow that tree leaves block in the summer.  I wear my big sweaters and sweatshirts and bundle up in flannel.  I rejoice that my kitties will sit in my lap, even though its not because they really want to cuddle but because they are cold.  All these are things I can be grateful for in winter, and they have helped me change my attitude a bit.

Until this year.  The winter that wouldn't let go.  Tuesday was the last straw.  After canceling my student group at CNU on multiple Tuesday nights, I was determined to go down even though it was quite frightening to drive through the blinding snow on I-64 to Newport News.  Just two days before I had been picking up cigarette butts in 70 degree weather and short sleeves, and now there was a dusting of snow on the ground.  Argh!!  I wanted to scream.  I wanted someone to blame. 

Something happened, though, as I sat in our group learning about praying with icons.  Big, fat, fluffy flakes drifted down outside the windows of the CNU chapel as we listened to chanting and gazed at icons in candlelight.  We were warm and cozy and the snow wasn't hurting us.  And though the drive home was stressful as the precipitation changed from rain to freezing rain to wintry mix and back to snow, by the time I got home, the most beautiful snowflakes were falling.  I got out of my car and walked to the mailbox.  The fat, wet flakes swirled and blew, landing in my hair and on my scarf.  As the light of the streetlamps reflected off the dancing flakes, I felt like I was walking in a snow globe.  It was the prettiest snow of the year.  I stayed outside for awhile, watching it swirl and blow, feeling the cold wet flakes on my face, smiling with delight.  I hate winter, but I've always love to watch snow fall.  And with all the snow we've had this year, it's either been late at night or when I was inside and couldn't watch. 

Thanks, winter, for giving me a walk in the snow globe.  If it's all the same to you, I hope that it will be your last gift this year.

Redeem

I love to walk.  One of the chief features I looked for when buying a house in Williamsburg was a good place to walk.  In Norfolk I used to walk beside the Lafayette River and in Chicago I enjoyed walking beside Lake Michigan.  The walk I take in Williamsburg is closer to traffic than I would prefer, but there are also lots of trees, trees that I love and that I watch change from season to season, trees that mark the route and serve as companions on the way.  A couple of years ago I saw a crew taking down one big, beautiful old tree - I think it was some kind of an oak.  I felt so sad to see it go.  Maybe it was sick or had been struck by lightening.  I will never know.

At any rate, time passed, and as I kept walking the same route, I noticed that someone had begun planting flowers in the stump of the tree.  What had been a sad, dead, lonely old stump  had become a source of life and color.  I broke out in a smile of delight at such an unexpected gift.  Someone tends the stump flowers all summer, and by July you can hardly tell that there is a stump there underneath the vibrant plants and flowers.  Reminds me a bit of the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree.  A few days ago, I was finally able to get out and walk after this long winter of snow and cold, and there was new life once again growing out of the stump. Pansies and the leaves of the daffodils that are yet to come.  I couldn't resist taking a quick picture.  There is another stump not far away; its tree was felled by one of the hurricanes.  Someone has begun planting flowers in it as well.

Redemption.  For me, those tenderly nurtured plantings have redeemed the loss of the tree.  Where once there is death, now there is life.  Spring is the same for me - it redeems the long, cold days of winter.  So many times when I am faced with questions of why God causes things to happen, I simply have no answer.  I'm not sure if God caused the tree to get sick and die so that it would need to be cut down.  I'm not sure that God decided the hurricane would take out certain trees.  What I am sure of is that God redeems things.  I have seen it again and again.  The resurrection redeeming the cross.  New life redeeming death.  Hope and joy returning where there had once been despair and pain.  Over and over I have watched God redeem things that I never thought possible.  I believe that God can and will redeem everything - though I will most likely not be around to see it happen.  That's the hard part.  I want it all to be redeemed right now.

PlanetRecovery wants to be part of the redeeming process.  Redeeming time and missed opportunities that have been lost to the disease of addiction.  Redeeming lives.  We want to help people find hope and health and restore that to the earth as well.  Last summer when visiting Maine, I saw a sign for a Redemption Center.  I thought it was some kind of church.  Ha!  The joke was on me.  It's a center for recycling.  Redeeming that which is seen to be trash.  Have you heard the phrase, "God didn't make no junk"?  I believe it's true.  No human life is trash.  Nothing is lost.  God will redeem it all.  Just like the flowers in the tree stump.  I wonder how many ways we can find to participate in the redeeming process.  I imagine the number is limitless.

Going to Jail

Yesterday I went to jail.  The Hampton City Jail next door to St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton.  I accompanied a friend of mine who does a Bible study/spirituality group for the women there.  A few years ago I went to the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail here in Williamsburg for a tour but that's the only other time I've been to jail.  When I was growing up "jail" was always the middle spot on the Monopoly board, that place that you had to go and miss your turns.  "Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to JAIL."  The place where you waited until you could return to the game.

For some reason jail does not frighten me.  I was nervous the first time I went, but yesterday I felt completely calm.  It's nice that Hampton City jail has windows and so light comes it.  That's probably the only nice thing about it, and I can only say it's nice because when the big doors slam shut behind me, I know that I will get to go out again in a few hours.  What isn't nice is 24 beds in 3 cells for 30 women.  And a lot of other things.

Yesterday I also read an article online about a lawyer in Texas who is wearing jailhouse orange scrubs for Lent in order to stand in solidarity with those in and returning from prison.  The article says, "McKeever is hoping his choice of clothes will kick-start discussions about the failures of the criminal justice and immigration detention systems and the lack of employment opportunities for 'returning citizens.'
He said his 'Lenten spiritual practice' also has caused him to reflect on the teachings of Jesus about the poor and dispossessed — and his own social privileges as a white professional male.
'I wanted this to be a time for repentance, sacrifice and humility in my own faith, and in a way that will lead many of us to a corporate confession of our complicity with a system that devastates individuals, families and communities, often communities of color,' he said."

Yeah.  What he said.  One of the reasons we're starting PlanetRecovery at SpiritWorks and picking up trash and cigarette butts is because many of the people who come to us cannot get jobs.  And if you can't get a job, find housing, and support yourself with basic human needs, what is left to you?  You've got to survive some way.  The answer is not more prison time.

I am only beginning to learn about the criminal justice system in our country, about mandatory minimums, the effects of the "war on drugs," the ghettoizing of the cities, and the economics of the prison system.  As with so many systemic issues, the problem seems so large and needs to be combated on so many levels.  It's easy to throw up my hands and say, "What's the use?!"

But that's how evil wins.  We may be powerless over the disease of addiction and over the choices that other people make, but we are not powerless to make changes in the world, starting with ourselves.  Unlike in Monopoly, after people have spent time waiting in jail, even if they have changed and are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to become productive members of society, they often don't get to return to the game.  "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"  Yes.  "Well too bad for you."  With PlanetRecovery, we hope to be able to help people return to the game, to gain job skills and employment so that they can provide for themselves and their families, so that they will have a chance.