Tag: forgiveness

A Change in Altitude

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‘Regret has to be useless or it’s not really regret.’
 ~Simone de Beauvoir

Rescuers did not find my uncle’s body.
But they found his axe at an icy altitude
impossible to navigate without one.

A little higher up, they found my uncle
’s sleeping bag at an altitude
unsurvivable without one.

You likely have a pen in purse or pocket.
Take it out and write a list of all
you need at your present altitude.

Next, change altitudes. Now, make another list:
the two biggest regrets of your life.
Take your time. Get it right. Because

here is all you need to know about need:
That list of regrets—cross one off.
You are going to need that space later.
~Jessica Goodfellow, “Unreachable” from Whiteout

I’ve known people who lost their lives while hiking/climbing in the mountains or due to some other tragedy – the cascade of decisions leading to their death are sources of regret for all who mourn them, even decades later. Somehow regret is a difficult feeling to let go;
we cling to it as if it is somehow an essential part of us.

It is easy for me to come up with a long list of regrets in my life. They seem to grow like weeds – useless, unplanned, unwanted and prolific, threatening to take over any good fruit being produced.

Few of us volunteer to share openly about our current guilt or shame unless we are sitting in a therapy group, a confessional booth, or AA. Instead it gives us permission to beat ourselves up, going over and over in our minds how we could have done things differently.

As a physician, I heard about such heart-ache in my clinical encounters – a patient will regret an impulsive sexual encounter that turned out badly, or drinking and drugging too much, or regret an ongoing conflict with a family member, or wish they had decided to get that vaccine before becoming ill with a potentially preventable infection.

Our list of regrets can be endless and life-destroying.

I understand the pain of regret as I too am a flawed and fractured person with an eight-decade history of things done and left undone, words said and unsaid. Even if I think I can somehow manage to cross a regret off my own list – perhaps I apologized and was granted forgiveness, or I tried to make right what I’d messed up — I still know a new regret will occupy its place before long.

I can’t simply fix my own regret list.

No matter what altitude we’re at — down in the pits in the lowest of the low, or up in the highest imaginable, I have come to realize that forgiveness is only possible through a knowledge of God Himself.
He came to walk beside us in our low spots and our high spots, no matter where we find ourselves. His work on earth has crossed off our regrets and mistakes and wiped us clean of them.

He did this because He understood our desperate need;
thanks to His sacrifice and love, our heart-aches are left at the Cross.

Come and See: Who Would Be First to Throw Stones?

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They went each to their own house but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.  

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.  

But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
John 7:53 – John 8:11

[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]

The adulterous woman is brought alone by the Jewish authorities for judgement, to be humiliated by serving as a test case for Jesus. This incident was not so much about justice as it was about seeing how Jesus would react to her situation.

His response is not what they expected.

He stoops to the ground, taking his time, avoiding their gaze, writing something (inscrutable to the reader) in the dirt. He then stands to look them in the eye to state what is necessary before acting out the law’s justice: only those who have not sinned will be first to cast the stone at a sinner.

Then he kneels again to trace His finger through the dirt —
outlining each person’s sin? naming names?
buying time for things to calm down?
keeping them guessing? just doodling?

The authorities, knowing their own burden of sin,
the oldest of them initially,
turn to leave one by one.
Soon only the accused woman and Jesus remain.

As St. Augustine writes about this powerful gospel story:
“relicti sunt duo, misera et misericordia” which translates to
“two were left: misery and mercy.”
She, standing in the misery of her sin;
He, standing in the glory of His mercy.

No longer condemned while He takes it all on Himself.
No stones to throw; free to go; sin no more.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Swallowed with All Hope

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Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
~ Dan Albergotti “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” from The Boatloads

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
 I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
The engulfing waters threatened me,[b]
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

“When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.

“Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.

 But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.“

~from Jonah 2

Jonsh Leaving the Whale by Jan Brueghel the Elder

“It is a childish work—the whale has the head of a dog
and Jonah looks suspiciously fresh.”
                                                       —www.artbible.info

In candied red, the white-bearded
prophet emerges hands still clasped in prayer,
clean, really clean, maybe too clean, first-day-
of-school clean, baptism clean.  It is a childish
painting, perhaps, the punished coming up
for air after a three-day, divine timeout,
his begging and pleading inside this flesh
box, sincere or not, but he’s out, old and fresh
in a world around him, Brueghel is sure
to make clear, swirling blue-black and solid
brown, the earth’s bruising, perhaps a wish
of healing yellow in the distance, a light
faded behind the eye’s focus. The dogfish
eyes big and rolling back mouth open

like the cave like the tomb like the brown creek
carp we refuse to touch hate to catch squishy
and formless but counted nonetheless.  But
he will dirty himself again after Nineveh
under the vine cussing at God telling
God His own business, and he will forget
the welcoming red the fresh fruit color
of that cloak—the thin (or thinning) clearing
in the background beyond sea and storm,
even the mouth as exit as release.
He will soon forget to consider how
suspicious it is for a man like him
sitting in death’s darkness for three days
to come out so clean so bright so forgiven.
~Jacob Stratman “a poem for my sons when they yell at God” from Christian Century

As I grumble about what I think is wrong with the world, I fail to understand that God has heard much grumbling from His children before. And much of what is wrong with the world is also wrong with me.

It must get tiresome, listening to it.

Perhaps that is why Jonah, who wanted to die rather than deal with the sinful city he had been sent to redeem, was given a little respite for three days to think things over until he understood what his role was.

By counting all those ribs inside the whale, he was thinking about all the things he had done wrong and all the things he should have done, but didn’t.

Whenever I stand in a structure with powerful beams towering over and surrounding me, I too feel swallowed whole. I am no more than a tiny speck within a vast organism.

Nevertheless, small as I am, I still matter to God. I am being prepared to be spit out, to do what I’m supposed to do, and not be concerned nearly as much with my disgruntlement with the rest of the world as with my disgruntlement with myself.

Swallowed whole by hope. Spit out forgiven.

Bring to Light the Mystery: Foot Washing

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sculpture by Max Greiner

Being thorough, I remove a holey sock
to view a diabetic man’s filthy feet.
I use the time to complete our talk
of what drove him to live on the street
as I wonder how any of this can help.

While he tells me more of his medical past,
I run warm water into a stainless bowl.
I immerse both his feet and begin to ask
myself what good it does for this poor soul
to allow himself to undergo this ablution.

Silently I sluice the water between his toes
and soap the crusty callous at his heel.
I marvel at his arch and notice how closely
it fits my palm. I know he can feel
this proximity too. He shuts his eyes.

Months of useless layers peel away,
revealing layers useless weeks ago.
Removing the tough brown hide of yesterday
yields clean pink skin, but we both know
this ritual will be useless days from now.

Still, this moment may withstand time’s test,
teaching us each lessons unknown before.
I learn the medicine of selflessness.
He learns what medicine is really for–
the hope that basin, soap and touch can bear.
~Robert Fawcett “Washing Feet”

Jesus washing the feet of his disciples by Finnish artist Albert Gustaf Edelfelt

What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.
~George Marion McClellan
from “The Feet of Judas” in The Book of American Negro Poetry 1922

Ford Maddox Brown — Washing Peter’s Feet

As an aide in a rest home caring for the crippled feet of the elderly,
as a medical student in an inner city hospital seeing the homeless whose socks had to be peeled off carefully to avoid pulling off gangrenous toes, as a doctor working with the down and out detox patients from the streets who had no access to soap and water for weeks,

I’ve washed feet as part of my job.

People always protest,
just as Peter did when Jesus started to wash his feet.
We never believe our feet,
those homely gnarled bunioned claw-toed calloused parts of us,
deserve that attention, and certainly not love.

We are ashamed to have someone care about them, care for them, when we don’t care enough on our own.

I have never washed the feet of someone about to betray me,
leading me to my death.

I have never had my feet washed by someone
who understood my heart needed cleansing even more than my feet, who loved me that much.

Until now.

This one thing should not be forgot:
Kneeling, He wears the humility and towels of a servant as His only raiments. He gently cups our heels in His palms, washes and dries our soles and arches and toes, but our hearts are held, still beating, in His loving hands.

Bring to Light the Mystery: Marred Beyond Human Likeness

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IMG_6229

In a daring and beautiful creative reversal,
God takes the worse we can do to Him
and turns it into the very best He can do for us.
~Malcolm Guite from The Word in the Wilderness

When I was wounded
whether by God, the devil, or myself
—I don’t know yet which—
it was seeing the sparrows again
and clumps of clover, after three days,
that told me I hadn’t died.
When I was young,
all it took were those sparrows,
those lush little leaves,
for me to sing praises,
dedicate operas to the Lord.
But a dog who’s been beaten
is slow to go back to barking
and making a fuss over his owner
—an animal, not a person
like me who can ask:
Why do you beat me?
Which is why, despite the sparrows and the clover,
a subtle shadow still hovers over my spirit.
May whoever hurt me, forgive me.
~Adelia Prado “Divine Wrath” translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson

See, my servant will act wisely;
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him—
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness—
15 so he will sprinkle many nations,
    and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
    and what they have not heard, they will understand.
Isaiah 52: 13-15

Emmet Till’s mother
speaking over the radio

She tells in a comforting voice
what it was like to touch her dead boy’s face,

how she’d lingered and traced
the broken jaw, the crushed eyes–

the face that badly beaten, disfigured—
before confirming his identity.

And then she compares his face to
the face of Jesus, dying on the cross.

This mother says no, she’d not recognize
her Lord, for he was beaten far, far worse

than the son she loved with all her heart.
For, she said, she could still discern her son’s curved earlobe,

but the face of Christ
was beaten to death by the whole world.
~Richard Jones “The Face” from Between Midnight and Dawn

Strangely enough~
it is the nail,
not the hammer,
that brings us together~
becoming the glue,
the safety,
the permanence of
solid foundation,
and strong supports,
or protecting roof.

The hammer is only a tool
to pound in the nail
where it binds so tightly
it can’t blend or be forgotten,
where the hole it leaves behind
is a forever reminder
of what I, wielding the hammer, have done
and how thoroughly
I am forgiven.

nailhole

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Bring to Light the Mystery: Sustained Hour By Hour

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Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention…
            And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well

Here is the mystery, the secret,
one might almost say the cunning,
of the deep love of God:
that it is bound to draw upon itself
the hatred and pain and shame
and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world,
but to draw all those things on to itself
is precisely the means chosen from all eternity
by the generous, loving God,
by which to rid his world of the evils
which have resulted from
human abuse of God-given freedom.
~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire

Inundated by the inevitable bad news of the world,
I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism
for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness.

I am frozen in the ice of sin, waiting to be thawed.

He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of me.
Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear
into the vortex of His love and beauty,
the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.

We are let in on a secret:
He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.

Created in His image, sustained and loved,
thus a reflection of Him,
it is no mystery
we are washed forever clean.

photo of Mt. Baker reflected in Wiser Lake by Joel DeWaard

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

A Lingering Pain

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I have left my wife at the airport,
flying out to help our daughter
whose baby will not eat.
And I am driving on to Kent
to hear some poets read tonight.

I don’t know what to do with myself
when she leaves me like this.
An old friend has decided to
end our friendship. Another
is breaking it off with his wife.

I don’t know what to say
to any of this-Life’s hard.
And I say it aloud to myself,
Living is hard, and drive further
into the darkness, my headlights
only going so far.

I sense my own tense breath, this fear
we call stress, making it something else,
hiding from all that is real.

As I glide past Twin Lakes,
flat bodies of water under stars,
I hold the wheel gently, slowing my
body to the road, and know again that
this is just living, not a trauma
nor dying, but a lingering pain
reminding us that we are alive.
~Larry Smith “Following the Road” from A River Remains

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are because
the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid. I am with you.
Nothing can ever separate us.
It’s for you I created the universe.
I love you. 
There’s only one catch.
Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours
only if you’ll reach out and take it. 
Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. 
~Frederich Buechner from Wishful Thinking 

You get out of bed, wash and dress;
eat breakfast, say goodbye and go away
never maybe, to return for all you know,
to work, talk, lust, pray, dawdle and do,
and at the end of the day, if your luck holds,
you come home again, home again.
Then night again. Bed. The little death of sleep, sleep of death. Morning, afternoon, evening—
the hours of the day, of any day, of your day and my day.
The alphabet of grace.
If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here:
through waking up and working,
through going away and coming back again,
through people you read and books you meet,
through falling asleep in the dark.
Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves.
Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure,
but clean enough for another day’s chalking.
~Frederich Buechner from “The Alphabet of Grace

Our six year old grandson, hoping to calm his older sister’s melt-down:
“Life is life – it’ll be okay tomorrow…“

So tomorrow –
move forward to leave a mark on a new day
after tonight’s erasing rest.

No matter what took place this day,
no matter the misgivings,
no matter what should have been left unsaid,
no matter how hard the heart,
no matter the lingering pain,
there is another day to make it right.

Forgiveness finds a foothold in the dark,
when eyelids close,
thoughts quietly open,
voices hush in prayers
of praise, petition and gratitude.

And so now
simply sleep on it
knowing his grace
abounds in blameless dreams.

Morning will come
awash in new light,
another chance
freely given.

How We Heal

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Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.
~ Linda Hogan from Solar Storms

Wet stones from the middle path.
A shard of green heartwood
ripped by the big storm
from the oak’s broken, heavy limb.

And we all have scar stories.

Which say more than wound stories.
Wound stories tell how we were injured.
Scar stories tell how we heal.
~Liza Hyatt,”What I Carry Home With Me” from Wayfaring

between the rosebuds
and the thorns
the pine tree branches
with their needles
and kitty claws

my hands are
always bleeding

and turning up
scars that cry, “I’m alive,
I feel it. I feel it all”
and then falling
back into whispers
while my body
heals itself
one more time
~Juniper Klatt, I was raised in a house of water

…see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before.

There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds,
wears them as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest –

And when two people have loved each other,
see how it is like a scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
~Jane Hirshfield from  “For What Binds Us”

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth, artist

photo by Nate Gibson

In winter, we are stripped naked as the bare trees right now; our skin and bones reveal the scars, broken branches, and healed fractures of previous winter windstorms. We no longer have anything to hide behind or among, as our defects are plain to see.  

Our whole story is a mystery untold, impossible to conceal.

Scars come in various sizes and shapes, some hidden, some quite obvious to all. How they are inflicted also varies–some accidental, others therapeutic, and too many intentional. 

The most insidious are the ones so internal, no one can see or know they are there. Sometimes we aren’t aware of them ourselves – only something unreachable is still hurting at times.

Most often, they are simply the scars of living in a hazardous world – on farm animals, healing into a tough scar of leathery “proud flesh”.

Yet, none of them are as deep and wide as scars accepted on our behalf, nor as wondrous as the Love that oozed from them, nor as amazing as the Grace that abounds to this day because of the promise they represent. These are scars from the Word made Flesh, a proud flesh that won’t give way, lasting forever.

Though I am abundantly flawed with pocks and scars, I am reminded each winter of my renewal. There are hints of new growth to come when the frost abates and the sap thaws.  

Indeed, I am prepared to wait an eternity, if necessary, to understand the rest of the story.

Strong Arms

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In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants
and hold the world
in arms grown strong with love.
And there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.
~Brian Andreas from Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind

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No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.
Hebrews 12:11-12

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She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
~Proverbs 31:17

help

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
~Philippians 4: 12-13

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Some of us think holding on makes us strong;
but sometimes it is letting go.
~Hermann Hesse

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The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
~Jane Hirshfield from “The Weighing” from The Beauty

A few years ago, I dislocated and broke my elbow in a clumsy fall while doing barn chores.

After a trip to the ER to have it set and put in a restrictive brace for three months, I learned letting go takes far more strength than holding on and pushing through.

I had to figure out how to “be flexible” when in reality, I felt immobilized.

I discovered how to ask for help when I’m in need which is tough for someone who has always been the helper – there was unity in our mutual need for one another.

Others watched me carefully to see if I’d quietly go stir-crazy with my new temporary limitations. Instead, I began seeing the world in a different light: what could I do on my own and what was impossible without assistance.

I needed to rely on others. For a stubborn person who thrives on self-sufficiency, this is a humbling reminder of my brokenness and frailty.

May the Lord have mercy on all those with broken wings who still endeavor to lift up the weight of the world and fly as high as ever.

Instead, may we find our strength is in Him, not in our feeble (and very breakable) arms.

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photos of “Feats of Strength” by Tom Otterness at Western Washington University

The Irony of the Search

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On Sundays,
when the rain held off,
after lunch or later,
I would go with my twelve year old
daughter into town,
and put down the time
at junk sales, antique fairs.

There I would
lean over tables,
absorbed by
lace, wooden frames,
glass. My daughter stood
at the other end of the room,
her flame-coloured hair
obvious whenever—
which was not often—

I turned around.
I turned around.
She was gone.
Grown. No longer ready
to come with me, whenever
a dry Sunday
held out its promises
of small histories. Endings.

Spirit of irony,
my caustic author
of the past, of memory,—

and of its pain, which returns
hurts, stings—reproach me now,
remind me
that I was in those rooms,
with my child,
with my back turned to her,
searching—oh irony!—
for beautiful things.
~Eavan Boland from “The Necessity for Irony” in The Lost Land.

How is it we look past the golden treasure
right in front of us,
the beauty gifted generously to us,
to pursue the glittery with no value in the long run?

If my history of misplaced focus be forgiven,
it is only because of your own golden and generous grace –
ironically, always the most beautiful object of my searching.