"It was never about the pretzels…"

I’ll say not.

Deacon Greg has two astonishing stories up over at his site, both have to do with clergy, authority, abuse and forgiveness, but they are still very different, and both a little mind-blowing.

Auntie Anne’s twist of faith. You know Auntie Anne – you love her pretzels (or at least I do). But you don’t know her searing story:

The very first time she had gone to the pastor’s office for help, six months after [her daughter] Angela’s death, she recounted, “he seduced me. I was a grieving 26-year-old mother who had just lost her child, with no reason to believe I couldn’t trust a pastor, and I felt like I had lost my husband, too, because we couldn’t connect anymore. That first day as I left his office, he told me, ‘Jonas cannot meet your needs, but I know I can.’ ”

Even now, she finds it hard to describe the six-year hold the pastor had on her, sometimes referring to it as her abuse, another time as rape, never as an affair or relationship. Anne knew that two of her sisters were under the same terrible spell at the same time. “Jonas and I call him ‘The Beast,’ ” she says. “I would threaten to tell, but he would always say no one’s going to believe you, that I couldn’t live without him, that I needed him. I was clean for six months before I was able to tell Jonas.”

The look in Jonas’s eyes was unbearable, she recalls. “I’m really sorry, and I’m a very sorry person,” she remembers telling him. And she hurried off to work after confessing. Jonas wasn’t there when she got home, but eventually, she heard his little truck in the driveway. He came into the kitchen.

“We just stood there, side by side, not touching, and he said, ‘Honey, I don’t have a whole lot I want to talk about. I just want you to promise me one thing. . . . I want you to be happy. So promise me you won’t leave me in the middle of the night with a note on the dresser. If you need to leave, we’ll plan it together. I’ll help you pack your bags, help you find a place to live, but you have to take the girls.”

It was the last bit that broke through to her, Anne remembers, penetrating her own wall of self-loathing.

“I felt overcome by the fact that he thought I was a good enough mom to take the kids with me,” she says, crying hard at the memory.

Read it all. Brave and heart-rending. I’ve said before that I don’t favor overidentifying with one’s status as victim, but this is not that. This is all about mercy – the forgiveness of others and the forgiveness of oneself.

Greg’s second piece, “Cleared” chronicles the journey of a priest unjustly accused of sexual abuse:

For Gondek, it has been the most trying time of his life, he said, while sitting with several members of the council Wednesday afternoon in the parish center. A testament to forgiveness, he and his parishioners said they hold no ill will against the accuser and instead pray for him.
[…]
Sowden’s attorney alleged in a news release in October that Sowden was fondled by Gondek while swimming at the camp in 1960. The investigation showed, however, that the camp did not open until 1961 and Gondek was not assigned there until 1962. Furthermore, the retired judge’s investigation and an independent polygraph of Gondek showed the priest does not know how to swim.

“Auntie Anne” says in the WaPo piece: “My philosophy is: Life is hard but God is good. Try not to confuse the two.”

Life is hard. God is good. Mercy is the miraculous stuff that heals and binds all of our pain, fear, rage, doubt and self-loathing and delivers it up to the Creator – who continually creates us anew. I find these stories terribly courageous, humbling and instructive. And I am so grateful for my own life, even with all of my mistakes, grave errors and stupidities. Mercy is miraculous.

Related: The Psalm of the Common Man: Sometimes I hate my life; but mostly things are good.