Tag: forgiveness

Brokenness Under Blessing

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The great mystery of God’s love is that
we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting,
as if we are not broken.

In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness
as a brokenness in which we can come in touch
with the unique way that God loves us.

The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing.

I cannot take people’s brokenness away 
and people cannot take my brokenness away.
 
But how do you live in your brokenness?

Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.
~Henri Nouwen from a lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

…be a glorified human being, with wounds.  God the Kintsugi master who beholds such brokenness in tender care, invites us, and asks of us, to be present in suffering and incalculable losses.  
… worship a Wounded Glorified Human Being, and be that ourselves. 
~Makoto Fujimura from Kinsugi Grace

It is a ceramic pot meant specially for our kitchen table — handmade by a potter friend using the abstract artistry of mane hairs from our farm’s Haflinger horses burnt onto the sides. But it hit the floor and broke into many pieces, looking completely beyond repair.

It is back on our table, repaired with love and care by another friend, using nothing more than copious amounts of Elmer’s Glue. This is the glue of every child’s school desk, the glue of every mother’s junk drawer, the glue of every heart that needs mending.

Elmer’s is not the gold of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken vessels are repaired with precious metals, creating an object even more valuable and beautiful than before, with streaks and tracks of gold highlighting their shattered history.

Yet it is now even more precious to me. Someone we love cared deeply enough to make it in the first place, and another we love cared deeply to repair it, making it even more beautiful and blessed in its brokenness, highlighting ragged pieces made whole again.

Someone made us.
Someone repairs us when we fall apart.
Someone blesses our brokenness with a glued-together beauty that makes us whole.

Every day, as the sun goes down,
I pause, broken, remembering how often
I messed up that day, in big and small ways.
Cracked open, my mistakes are illuminated,
weighing down my heart, impossible to forget.
Yet, as I pray for mercy, there follows a peacefulness,
as my errors are blotted out. My slate, one more time, is wiped clean.

Therefore do not lose heart.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart.
2 Corinthinians: 6-12, 16

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When We Arise: Overcome with Goodness

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In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?
~John Stott from “The Cross of Christ”

With all that happens daily in this disordered world, in order to even walk out the door in the morning, I fall back on what we are told in God’s Word, in 365 different scripture verses for each and every day of the year:

Fear not.

Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.

And so – we must overcome — despite our fears in this world of pain.

As demonstrated by the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary of Bethany, we must do what we can to sacrifice for others, to live in such a way that death cannot erase the meaning and significance of a life. We are called to give up our own selfish agendas in order to consider the needs of others.

It is crystal clear from Christ’s example as we observe His journey to the cross next week: we are to cherish life -all lives- even unto death. As Christ Himself forgave those who hated and murdered Him, He forgives us as well.

Our only defense against the evil we witness is God’s offense through His Love. Only God can lead us to Tolkien’s “where everything sad will come untrue”, where we shall live in peace, walk hand in hand, no longer alone, no longer afraid, no longer shedding tears of grief and sorrow, but tears of relief and joy.

No longer overcome by evil but overcome with goodness, all to God’s glory.

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

The Lord our God is good
The Lord our God is good
Full of kindness and compassion
Merciful and just
The Lord our God is good
Who else knows our deepest pain
Bears it as his own
Finds us in our naked shame,
Clothes and brings us home
Who takes his inheritance
And gives it all away
Welcomes guests to feast with him
Who never can repay

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Now Realigned

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Christmas sets the centre on the edge;
The edge of town, the outhouse of the inn,
The fringe of empire, far from privilege
And power, on the edge and outer spin
Of  turning worlds, a margin of small stars
That edge a galaxy itself light years
From some unguessed at cosmic origin.
Christmas sets the centre at the edge.

And from this day our  world is re-aligned
A tiny seed unfolding in the womb
Becomes the source from which we all unfold
And flower into being. We are healed,
The end begins, the tomb becomes a womb,
For now in him all things are re-aligned.
~Malcolm Guite “Christmas on the Edge”

When the barn doors opened
on a bright frosted Advent morning,
the inner darkness was illuminated by a beam of sunlight,
exposing an equine escapee.

His stall door stood ajar, the door mysteriously unlatched.
He meandered the unlit barn aisle lined with hay bales
munching his breakfast, lunch, and dinner
all of which lay strewn and ruined at his feet.

Not only did he somehow open his locked door
but also chose to leave poop piles
on every other horses’ breakfast, lunch, and dinner
as they watched helpless from behind their stall doors.

He had the run of the place all night~
obvious from countless hoof prints amid
overturned buckets, trampled halters, tangled baling twine,
twisted hoses, toppled bales and general chaos.

At least he didn’t reach up and start the tractor
or eat the cat food or pry open the grain barrel
or chew a saddle or two, or rip horse blankets apart,
but from the looks of things – I think he tried.

He nickered as the opened door highlighted his nocturnal escapade,
caught red-hoofed and boldly nonchalant, proclaiming his innocence.
Like a child asking for milk to go with a stolen cookie,
he approached me, begging for a carrot after feasting all night.

I grabbed a fist full of mane, pulled him back to double lock him in.
Surveying the mess, I was tempted to turn around, shut the barn doors
and banish it back to the cover of darkness,
to hide his sins now apparent in the light of day.

Instead, newly realigned in my wait for Christmas,
I remember all the messes I’ve made in my life.
So I clean his up, give him a hug,
and forgive as I’m forgiven.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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A Common Hand

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Because what’s the alternative?
Because of courage.
Because of loved ones lost.
Because no more.
Because it’s a small thing; shaking hands; it happens every day.
Because I heard of one man whose hands
haven’t stopped shaking since a market day in Omagh.
Because it takes a second to say hate, but it takes longer,
much longer, to be a great leader.
Much, much longer.

Because shared space without human touching
doesn’t amount to much.
Because it’s easier to speak to your own
than to hold the hand of someone whose side
has been previously described, proscribed, denied.
Because it is tough.
Because it is tough.
Because it is meant to be tough, and this is the stuff of memory,
the stuff of hope, the stuff of gesture, and meaning and leading.
Because it has taken so, so long.
Because it has taken land and money and languages
and barrels and barrels of blood.

Because lives have been lost.
Because lives have been taken.

Because to be bereaved is to be troubled by grief.
Because more than two troubled peoples live here.
Because I know a woman whose hand hasn’t been shaken
since she was a man.
Because shaking a hand is only a part of the start.
Because I know a woman whose touch calmed a man
whose heart was breaking.
Because privilege is not to be taken lightly.

Because this just might be good.
Because who said that this would be easy?
Because some people love what you stand for,
and for some, if you can, they can.
Because solidarity means a common hand.
Because a hand is only a hand; so hang onto it.

So join your much discussed hands.
We need this; for one small second.
So touch.
So lead.
~Pádraig Ó Tuama “Shaking Hands”

Nothing is new about conflicts over borders and religion and politics. What is new is the ability of an individual to share the terror and hatred to the rest of the world in mere seconds. We all become unwitting witnesses to human pain and suffering, eager to take sides if we can bear to watch.

We each share a common hand. We need leaders who reach out to touch one another with more than words. They represent the human beings who lost limbs and lives in the battle for supremacy.

Historic handshakes are never meaningless, but even more vital is a connection between humans steeped in historical hatreds. We need to reach out and help lift each other’s burdens.

Take my hand. Look in my eyes. Even for one small second.

Sculpture by Artist Albert Gyorgy

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Choosing to Protect Unseen Nests

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I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
~Tess Gallagher “Choices” from Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems

Might I be capable of such tenderness?
Might I consider the needs of others,
by saving not just one nest,
but all future nests,
rather than exercise my right
to an unimpeded view,
wanting the world to be exactly
how I want it?

I must not forget:
my right to choose
demands that I
choose to do right by those
who have no choice.

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A Solace of Ripe Plums

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I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
~William Carlos Williams “This is Just to Say”

(and the actual response from Dr. Williams’ wife Florence published later with his poem posthumously)

Dear Bill: I’ve made a couple of sandwiches for you. In the ice-box you’ll find blue-berries–a cup of grapefruit a glass of cold coffee.

On the stove is the tea-pot with enough tea leaves for you to make tea if you prefer–Just light the gas– boil the water and put it in the tea

Plenty of bread in the bread-box and butter and eggs– I didn’t know just what to make for you. Several people called up about office hours– See you later.

Love. Floss.

Please switch off the telephone.

munching a plum on   
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good   
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
~William Carlos Williams “To a Poor Old Woman”

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t

succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.
~Mary Oliver “The Plum Trees” from American Primitive

Who needs an icebox anyway
when the plums
are hanging heavy
in the orchard

dotted with chilled dew
glistening
in the spare pink light
of dawn

so ripe
and so ready
their golden flesh
warming in the sun.
~Emily Gibson “A response to Dr. Williams”

There is a plum tree on our farm that is so plain and unassuming much of the year that I nearly forget that it is there.  It is a bit off by itself away from the other fruit trees; I have to make a point of paying attention to it otherwise it just blends into the background.

Despite not being noticed or having any special care, this tree thrives.  In the spring it is one of the first to bud out into a cloud of white blossoms with a faint sweet scent.  Every summer it is a coin toss whether it will decide to bear fruit or not. Some years–not at all, not a single plum. Other years, like this one, it is positively glowing with plum harvest– each a golden oval with a pink blush. These plums are extraordinarily honey flavored and juicy, a pleasure to eat right off the tree if you don’t mind getting past a bitter skin and an even more bitter pit inside. This is a beauty with a bite — sweet surrounded by bitter.

I think the tree secretly grins when it sees puckering taking place all around it.

This tree is a lot like some people I know: most of the time barely noticeable, hanging on the periphery,  fairly reserved and unobtrusive.  But when roots go deep and the nourishment is substantial, they bear a bounty of fruit, no doing things half-way. The feast is plentiful and abundant, the meal glorious despite the hint of sour. Maybe it is even more glorious because of sweet within bitter.

If “tucker” describes a great down-home meal, then being “plum-tuckered” would be eating our fill of the bitter-sweet. Even when the bitter in this life is plentiful, the sweet will always overwhelm and overcome.

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Finding Refuge

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When the wind
turns and asks, in my father’s voice,
Have you prayed?

I know three things. One:
I’m never finished answering to the dead.

Two: A man is four winds and three fires.
And the four winds are his father’s voice,
his mother’s voice . . .

Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires.
And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,
dreaming, thinking . . .
Or is he the breath of God?

When the wind turns traveler
and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed?
I remember three things.

One: A father’s love
is milk and sugar,
two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left over
is trimmed and leavened to make the bread
the dead and the living share.

And patience? That’s to endure
the terrible leavening and kneading.

And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep.

When the wind
asks, Have you prayed?
I know it’s only me
reminding myself

a flower is one station between
earth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and blood
was fire, salt, and breath long before
it quickened any wand or branch, any limb
that woke speaking. It’s just me
in the gowns of the wind,

or my father through me, asking,
Have you found your refuge yet?
asking, Are you happy?

Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.
The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.
~Li Young Lee “Have You Prayed?”

I pray because I can’t help myself.
I pray because I’m helpless.
I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping.
It doesn’t change God — it changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

I never did hear my father pray out loud except for saying grace together as a family before our dinner meal. Once he described a prayer he uttered while hunkering in a trench on the island of Tarawa during WWII: if God could see him safe through the three years of combat, he would turn his life to over to God and become a preacher of the Word.

He came home safe, his body still whole but he could see the harsh reality of his foxhole promise: agriculture teachers made better incomes than preachers. He had a family to support so he became a high school FFA teacher. I’m not sure he ever forgave himself for not keeping his word, even when God did. I figure the world needs good farmers as much as good preachers and he trained his share of farmers over the decades, including me.

I learned to pray out loud at our small church as we spend part of every evening service praying out loud for the needs of our church people, our community and our world. It still does not come easily or naturally to me, yet I hope our children, having heard their parents pray out loud, have learned they are not just talking to the wind when they speak to God aloud, when helpless, when weary, when joyful, when thankful.

Praying changes everything.

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The Honesty of Horses

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It was dragging my hands along its belly,
loosing the bit and wiping the spit
from its mouth that made me
a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,
a fly tasting its ear. It was
touching my nose to his that made me know
the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that
made me know the long field’s secrets.
But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know
the sorrow of horses. Made me
forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.
And in this way drop my torches.
And in this way drop my knives.
Feel the small song in my chest
swell and my coat glisten and twitch.
And my face grow long.
And these words cast off, at last,
for the slow honest tongue of horses.
~Ross Gay “Becoming A Horse”

photo by Emily Vander Haak

Living the dream of nearly every young girl, I grew up with a horse in our back field. The first was a raw-boned old paint who allowed my older sister and toddler me to sit atop him, walk around the barnyard and on the driveway at no more than a walk. He was arthritic and sore, but patient and tolerant to the attention of little girls. When we moved away to another part of the state, he didn’t come with us and I was too young to fully understand where he had been sent.

The horse on our new farm was my sister’s 4H project who was a spiffy chestnut mare with a penchant for a choppy trot and speedy canter. My sister would go miles with friends on horseback down back-country roads. Sadly, my sister soon became allergic (hives and swelling) to any contact with horses. I was barely old enough to start riding by myself in our fields.The little mare missed her adventures with my sister but seemed to adapt to my inexperience and took care of me as best she could – I never fell off. One night, she broke through a fence and ate her fill in a field of growing oat grass. The next day she was euthanized due to terrible colic. I was inconsolable, crying for days when visiting her burial spot on our property.

These first two horses tolerated the inexperience of their handlers and tried to compensate for it. I’ve since owned a few horses who knew exactly how to take advantage of such inexperience. Horses size up people quickly as our feelings and fear can be so transparent; it takes much longer for us to understand the complexity of their equine mind. Many diverse training techniques are marketed as testimony to that mystery.

I have learned that horses appreciate a patient and quiet approach, reflecting their consistency and honesty. They like to be looked in the eye and appreciate a soft breath blown over their whiskers. They want us to find their itchy spots rather than act the part of a pseudo-predator with intent to harm.

That’s not asking too much of us.

In return, we learn how best to communicate what we need from them. They are remarkably willing to work when they understand the job and feel appreciated. In return, we are given a chance to experience the world through their eyes and ears, to comprehend the remarkable sensitivity of a skin able to shiver a fly away.

I’ve spent much of my life learning with horses and hope there are a few years still left to learn more. Whatever sorrow they feel in their hearts is when I’ve failed to be who they need me to be. Their gift to me is an honest willingness to forgive, again and yet again.

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Dandelion Breath

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Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
~Linda Pastan, “Spring” from Heroes in Disguise. 

Spring dawdled this year, arriving at least three weeks behind the usual timeline due to chill winds and soppy ground. I waited impatiently for the transition, begging the first dandelion to appear.

Then it hit. Shocking in its suddenness, a few May days of uncharacteristic 90 degree temperatures, forcing everything to push to the surface and swell to bursting.

We’re playing catch-up. Grasses leaped to jungle height, and bold weeds dominate every square inch.

Now I must adapt to summer heat and smoky horizons; no more sweaters needed when the sweatiness begins.

I already miss Spring’s soft dandelion breath as I swelter in a premature Summer sauna.

Yet all is forgiven, delicate Spring.
You will come ’round again next year. Only you know the timing of your grand entrance when we’ll throw flowers at your feet.

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Broken, But Not Shattered

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Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.
~Phyllis Levin “End of April”

photo by Josh Scholten

The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.
~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.
~Gregory Orr from Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

Every day, as the sun goes down,
I pause, feeling a bit or a lot broken, remembering how often
I messed up that day, in big and small ways.

I’ve been cracked open, my mistakes leaking and illuminated,
weighing down my heart, impossible to forget,
ready to take wings as I pray for mercy.

With forgiveness, there follows peacefulness.
Broken, but not shattered.
Cracked, but glistening clean.

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