Anger, Honesty and Forgiveness

As we continue our Lent journey, we also continue our journey of forgiveness.  We pause so that we can be self-reflective enough to consider all of our emotions.

We get honest.

To forgive or offer genuine apologies we need to become honest about our powerful, uncomfortable feelings such anger, jealousy, greed, sorrow, guilt, shame, and pain.

During our message this weekend, I encouraged folks to remember to read the Psalms as there is a Psalm for every emotion.  Therefore, there is a prayer for every feeling of the human heart before God.  Nothing is hidden.

One of the best ways to discover aspects of ourselves we are blind to is to look closely at our enemies.  It is often said that the things we can't stand in others reveal sides of ourselves we can't bear.

One journal exericse, if you are game, is to make a list.  Identify several eternal enemies in your life such as specific people, government groups, people groups, or situations.  Name them and give as much specific information as you can.  What about these persons or situations make you feel so critical or have such hostility?

Now, make a second list on another sheet of paper.  This time identify internal enemies in your life; attitudes, behaviors, reactions, perceived weaknesses or limitations.

Finally, compare your lists.  What do you notice?  Are there any common themese?  Any surprises or fresh connections for you about yourself such as patterns or opposites?

As we seek to know ourselves and be known by our God in Christ Jesus we ask, "What can you learn from our eternal and internal enemies?"  What can they teach us about how we handle conflict?  Or what we struggle with that needs strengthening?

Your reflections become fodder for more prayer.  Seek God's presence in the midst of your honesty about your feelings about all of your enemies.  Our genuine response which moves us further in our capacity for forgiveness is to invite Jesus' healing grace into our lives.

See you in the forgiving place,

Pastor Michelle

Looking Closely in the Mirror

"I am startin' with the man in the mirror

I am asking him to change his ways" 

(from Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror)

As a prelude or movement into forgiveness, we must take the courageous step of self-examination.  Just as women need to perform self-exams to prevent cancer or illness, so too does spiritual self-examination prevent us from falling further away from God and a life of abundance.

I blame it on my uncle.  Originally, he planned on becoming a Jesuit, but instead he joined the Paulist Fathers.  Long ago while I was in seminary at Duke, my Uncle (Father) Mike sent a large box of books to my second floor apartment.

Seminarians already have too much to read, but my wise uncle who made it through Yale Divinity School with flying colors knew I needed a different sort of reading.  Packed tightly in a box were a stack of spiritual classics on Christians mystics and saints!  He fed my soul while my brain was learning to love God.

Tucked into that welcome box of respite from theological treatises and biblical commentaries was a little thin book which introduced me to St. Ignatius' examen.  (As I said Uncle Mike almost became a Jesuit!)  There some where between Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke Garden, Duke chapel, and the Divinity school library (which always smelled moldly in the spring) I began asking myself questions.

I would look in the mirror of my day and ask, "For what I am most grateful?  for what am I least grateful?"  Or "how have I experienced consolation or desolation in my day?"  Sounds simple enough.  And it is.  But it is not simple, at all, really.

Asking these sorts of questions daily begins to have an accumulated impact on how I hold myself accountable to Christ's teachings, what connections do I notice between my actions and attitudes, and how I practice the faith I believe in.  That may not be simple, but it has become a practice of self-check.  It is the mirror that I ponder as I seek more of Christ and less of me.

I invite you to ask yourself for this next week these questions.  Journal or take note of your responses.  Talk with a trusted wise spiritual friend.  Invite the Holy Spirit to bring you healing and forgiveness.

See you in the forgiving place,

Pastor Michelle

Forgiving- Healing the Human Family

Every week in Sunday morning worship we say the same thing.  I wonder if we are aware of the significance of the words coming out of our mouths?

"...forgive us as we forgive those who trespass (or sin) against us..."

Important things are often repeated.  Helpful things are shared more than once, because they are very helpful.  Maybe that is part of why we say these words so often. Forgiveness is important.  And forgiveness helps our relationships.

Forgiveness, writes Marjorie Thompson, is the foundation from which new life flows in a wounded, strife-weary world.  And if ever there was a time in our contemporary era in which people who think differently from one another, vote differently, and politic differently need to find other ways to connect for the first time or re-connect through forgiveness; now is the best time to consider the gift that forgiveness is. A community, no matter the size or shape, is difficult, if not impossible, to establish if an offering of apology or recognition of wound is not addressed and healed.

Last Sunday we talked about how the best starting point for forgiveness is not ourselves, nor the people we want to forgive (or who need our apology), but the best starting point on forgiveness is our God in Christ.

Rev. Thompson concludes that "Forgiveness is an out-pouring of love from the inner life of the Trinity and can only be fully understood when experienced as a transforming power in the life of a human community that mirrors God's being."  God's mysterious and unique nature, as a three-in-one-Holy Being, is a manifestation of love which over spills into our hearts...empowering us to ask, seek, and offer forgiveness.

This week as you move through your Lent journey... start with God as you pray.  Start with asking God's Spirit to show you for whom you need to forgive.  Start with seeking God's Spirit to reveal who you need to apologize or seek their forgiveness.  And trust that our God in Christ is big enough, large enough, and loving enough to aid you in your giving and receiving of forgiveness.

See you at the forgiving place,

Pastor Michelle