{"id":5950,"date":"2014-09-06T22:17:04","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T02:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=5950"},"modified":"2014-09-06T22:17:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T02:17:04","slug":"forgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/forgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Pentecost<\/a>Ingrained. \u00a0Deep in the bone.<\/p>\n

Things that I have done one hundred and forty times are like that \u2013 they are ingrained.\u00a0 They have become habitual.<\/p>\n

We all have some of those habits, those ingrained things we do that are so deep they are way beyond conscious decision making, and they are not prompted responses to feelings \u2013 though there is a thread of thought in them, and a persistently vague feeling that the absence of doing them is not alright.<\/p>\n

\"Replace<\/a>Brushing teeth, for instance.\u00a0 On good days and bad, when ill, when exhausted, when so eager for my bed my body no longer wants to stand up, still I floss and brush. \u00a0 It\u2019s a habit I acquired.\u00a0 I dimly remember star charts in the bathroom and my mother holding out the box of gold stars as a lure.<\/p>\n

Good habits are hard to acquire, I\u2019ve found.\u00a0 Take gym routines.\u00a0 How I can make excuses, put off till later, then later still . . . \u00a0It takes something more than knowing the good in good habits, and more than wanting those habits, to ingrain them.<\/p>\n

And bad habits are hard to undo.\u00a0 Ask any smoker, any drinker, any dieter, any worrier.\u00a0 These are not casual desires or fleeting fears.\u00a0 Habits can be defensive and comforting, or preparatory (worst casers are always prepared) or impulsive (saying a reflexive No to new things).<\/p>\n

All habits have power.\u00a0 And we come to be known by the habits we develop, our odd, particular, useful, self-destructive patterns.<\/p>\n

Jesus advised Peter that forgiveness was to be ingrained in this way, habitually.\u00a0 Shall we forgive seven times? he asked, and Jesus said, No, seventy times seven.<\/em>\u00a0 Seven times often seems over generous to me.\u00a0 And sometimes once seems too hard.\u00a0 One hundred and forty is beyond counting, really.\u00a0 And it goes beyond the offender. \u00a0Such a large number, beyond thinking about the offense or the person, goes to the ingrained place where choice is no longer an activity but a reflex, our way of being in this world.<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>Russell Banks, in The Sweet Hereafter<\/em><\/strong>, has school-bus driver Dolores Driscoll confide to us how she waits every day for the same three siblings, who are always late.\u00a0 Time and again she had chided them, but when nothing changed in them she changed herself, turning those extra minutes into a meditative time for sipping coffee and thinking about her life. \u00a0And so she forgave them, and set herself free.<\/p>\n

For many Catholics, saying the rosary is this kind of self-change, this kind of letting-go of past offenses, this kind of deep-in-the-bone recitation that needs no thought at all, but aids in the necessary draining of the spirit, letting resentment and offenses slowly empty, \u00a0letting body and soul recover from bruising, regain elasticity, reclaim connection to hope and confidence.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, as a young chaplain in Boston City Hospital, nurses asked me for help with a woman who had been badly burned in a fire, had been alcoholic for years, and was dying.\u00a0 The drugs she had been given for pain, together with the alcohol withdrawal, had produced delusions, and she was yelling, screaming, and inconsolable, often talking to people no one else could see. \u00a0I went into the room and could barely get the woman\u2019s attention, let alone converse.\u00a0 So, because I could think of nothing else to do, I began reciting the Lord\u2019s Prayer, and she turned her face toward me, and after a moment, joined me in it. \u00a0The Lord\u2019s prayer lived in a deeper place in her than her demons, than her pain, than her fear. \u00a0 I said it again, \"Pentecost<\/a>and so did she. \u00a0We kept repeating and repeating that prayer.\u00a0 When\u00a0 I left the room she was still reciting it, and after a while, fell asleep.\u00a0 When she awoke, the process needed to be repeated, but it did calm her, and keep her, for the last two days of her life, from being consumed be her demons.\u00a0 Forgive us our sins . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

In the Catholic tradition habit has occupied a premiere position in the religious life.\u00a0 Prayers from the rosary have been assigned as acts of penance for centuries by Catholic priests, and the cycle of habitual prayers marks the hours of every day in the Catholic breviary. \u00a0Giving up personality and choice in favor of habit has been encouraged. \u00a0And I both agree and disagree. \u00a0What love is there without imagination? \u00a0But forgiveness, at best, is not a response, it is an imbedded part of who we are.<\/p>\n

And so much of life falls outside the protection habits offer.\u00a0 So much of life is horrifying, unexpected, and beyond mild words of forgiveness.\u00a0 How could survivors of the German death camps be protected by forgiveness, or even asked to forgive?\u00a0 And yet, for some of them the emphasizing of memories of kindnesses given and received, among prisoners, and from German people whose compassion withstood the rule of evil, became a help in surviving.<\/p>\n

\"Replace<\/a>In the 1960s, six year old Ruby Bridges integrated an all-white school by herself, walking there every day with two federal escorts in front of her and two more behind her, while around her an angry crowd of white adults heaped abuses on her little head.\u00a0 Child psychiatrist Robert Coles noticed her lips were moving as she walked, and asked her, in her home, what she was saying.\u00a0 She said she was praying, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.<\/em>\u00a0 Her parents hoped, by giving her this prayer, she could shield her mind and heart, and walk unscathed through her daily hell.<\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in a South African prison, said, Forgiveness liberates the soul.\u00a0 It removes fear.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it is such a powerful weapon.<\/em>\u00a0 When asked about his jailers, he responded that forgiving them was a choice to set himself free. \u00a0He could leave those guards there in the prison instead of remembering them always by nursing resentment. \u00a0And soon after his release, before his election, when he came to Boston, he danced a little freedom dance for all of us to see.<\/p>\n

\"Replace<\/a>Forgiving, then, is separate from loving the other, separate from liking, separate from restoring trust in relationship, and certainly separate from forgetting.\u00a0 If we make forgiveness a habit, it becomes rooted far deeper inside us than liking, trusting or forgetting can be. \u00a0And it becomes about loving God and ourselves, not about loving the offender.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness, the best power we have, is about survival and freedom.\u00a0 Amen to that power.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Illustrations:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Aristotle Poster.<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n

2. Toothbrushes.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Image from Commons, Wikipedia.org.<\/p>\n

3. \u00a0The Sweet Hereafter book cover<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n

4. \u00a0Rosary.<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n

5. \u00a0The Problem We All Live With, <\/strong><\/em>1964, by Norman Rockwell. \u00a0Image from Wikipedia page for the painting.<\/p>\n

6. \u00a0Family Giving Thanks to the Ocean.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>2008. Tiruvanimayur, Chennai. MacKay Savage. \u00a0Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ingrained. \u00a0Deep in the bone. Things that I have done one hundred and forty times are like that \u2013 they are ingrained.\u00a0 They have become habitual. We all have some of those habits, those ingrained things we do that are so deep they are way beyond conscious decision making, and they are not prompted responses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites"],"yoast_head":"\nForgiving<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ingrained. \u00a0Deep in the bone. Things that I have done one hundred and forty times are like that \u2013 they are ingrained.\u00a0 They have become habitual. 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