Forgiveness Challenge Day 6 - Many Thoughts

Yesterday was Day 6 of the challenge.  Have you ever noticed how when you learn a new word that suddenly you start hearing it over and over?  Or when you start talking about a topic, it begins appearing everywhere?  Well today I was bombarded with the topic of forgiveness.

The reading over at Fifty Days of Fabulous was titled, "Rifts and Reconciliation," and included a link to the Center for Reconciliation at Duke University.  I had never heard of it  (I don't think) but a quick visit to the site piqued my curiosity, making me wish I could attend the Summer Institute's seminar on Faith and Trauma.  Filed away as a future resource.

Then in Robin Casarjian's Houses of Healing:  A Prisoner's Guide to Inner Power and Freedom, I read about mediation that takes place between crime victims and those in the criminal justice system in which the two come together to tell their stories and find healing.  It can be very powerful for both people.

Last night I watched the movie, In Our Country, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.  Very apropos considering the Tutus have sponsored the forgiveness challenge.  Hearing about the atrocities even from the distance of viewing a movie still hurts my heart.  How much courage it took for the people of South Africa to come forward and tell their stories.  No future without forgiveness is what Desmond Tutu says.  I suppose that's true for all of us.

In the challenge yesterday, we were asked the question, "What would be the best outcome?" of our forgiving.  Reconciliation.  Freedom.  Peace.  Forward movement.  Healing.  Wholeness.  Joy.

Forgiveness Challenge Day 5: What Holds Us Back?

"I would like to share with you two simple truths:  there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness."  -Desmond Tutu, The Book of Forgiving:  The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World. 

The book arrived in the mail yesterday, and I've just started reading it.  I'm only on page 3 of the Introduction and already I am inspired.  How could the people of South Africa have chosen the path of forgiveness in light of the atrocities that had happened to them?

The past two days in the Forgiveness Challenge we have looked at the things that hold us back from forgiveness.  Things like thinking the other person needs to apologize, thinking that people who forgive are weak, thinking that forgiving means condoning or forgetting or letting people off the hook. 

I agree with Bishop Tutu that there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.  I believe it with all my heart.  Every human being is created by God in the image of God and every human being is beloved of God.  If you never hear me say anything else, hear me say that.  What frustrates me is that as deeply as I hold that belief, I still find it difficult to forgive when harm has been done to me.  What I realized today is that most of the people who have harmed me in my life have not done so intentionally.  I have blessedly not been a victim of malicious violence.  Most of the people who have hurt me are broken or sick or simply more interested in getting their needs met than in helping me meet mine.  Or they used methods that might have been helpful to others but were harmful to me because of who I am.

These people are most definitely deserving of forgiveness.  And in this moment sitting by myself in my home, I forgive them.  I do.  They were doing their best at the time.  We all do things that hurt others and I, for one, hope that those I've hurt will forgive me.

Where the problem comes is when I then see or deal with these people again or with new ones who hurt me, and all my loving, forgiving thoughts fly out the window as my stomach tightens into knots and my pulse races and my face gets hot, and I will the ground to open up and swallow me.  Or I have conversations in my head and yell at the people.  Or I stutter and stammer and have no ability to be natural and loving because I'm so angry or scared that I can't look past my own feelings.

I want to learn how to get from thinking I have forgiven to actual forgiveness.  With God's help, I will.

Forgiveness Challenge Day 2: Forgiveness & Physical Health

Today's challenge talked about the science of forgiveness and how our spiritual, emotional, and physical health can be affected when we haven't forgiven someone.  I know that's true for me.  When I haven't forgiven someone and I see that person, I get knots in my stomach and my heart rate speeds up and the reptile part of my brain starts shouting, "Run, run, run!"  Where before there might have been ease and flow in the conversation, now I am anxious and constricted.  I can see how over time the constriction could cause more serious health problems.

Today I had a massage, one of my favorite things.  As the masseuse worked deep into the knots that live perpetually in my upper back between my shoulders, I had a memory surface from at least 15 years ago of someone I worked with and had a difficult relationship with for awhile.  As I remembered that time, I wondered if the people who have hurt me or who I have resented are living in those knots in my shoulders.  If I could release the pain and the hurt and the anger (most of which I don't ever consciously feel anymore) would the knots in my shoulders release too?  I don't know the answer to the question, but I found myself thinking about that person from long ago and releasing him.  What happened just doesn't matter anymore.  Maybe the massage and the intention to forgive will loosen the knots just a little. 

Jesus said, "If you forgive the sins of others they will be forgiven them, and if you retain the sins of others, they will be retained."  How I long to grow in the spiritual life to a point where I never retain the sins of others.  That's between them and God.  I want my heart to be full of forgiveness - and it often is when I'm sitting in my house thinking about it in theory.  It's when I come face to face with other people that it becomes more difficult.  One of those things to which I can say, "I will, with God's help."  Without God's help, I stay caught up in the hurt feelings.  With God's help, grace is possible. 

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."