[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, when I was young and stupid and very unhappy, I did 
something horrible, a piece of real, substantial cruelty that devastated 
another person. I won't get into the details; you don't need to know, and 
there are others involved. Let's just say that it was something I've never 
properly forgiven myself for and that I wish, somehow, I could set to rights.

I haven't talked about it much -- shame, you know -- but on Thursday I 
found myself telling a young friend, over coffee and a cinnamon bun. She 
listens well, and she's been through enough herself that I could trust her 
not to judge and condemn me. The whole story came out in a rush. My friend 
listened and probed gently, got the facts straight in her head, made gentle 
and encouraging noises, until I finished my narrative and said "I wish I 
could make amends." "You'll find a way," my friend said, with firm certainty.

I sat there, and an extraordinary sense of peace came over me. I could, for 
the first time, properly see what had driven me to behave so badly: a whole 
host of factors, none of them anyone's fault -- not even mine! -- all 
acting together.  There was so much we didn't know, back then, about 
healthy psychospirituality and what affects it, what nurtures or undermines 
it, and that was a huge part of the problem. My young friend, who is 
extraordinarily wise for her years and who knows me very well, could see 
how the patterns interacted and could pronounce a sort of absolution for 
me. And for the first time in all these years -- more than half my life -- 
I could accept it and forgive myself.  It wasn't that I was minimizing what 
I had done or refusing to take ownership of the act; it was that I could 
finally understand *why* I'd behaved so badly, and that (for me) always 
makes forgiveness possible.

But it was more than that. For the first time, I could see how my 
inexcusable act had, over time, produced real and substantial good for me 
and for the person I'd hurt. As always, I don't believe that God plans or 
wills hurt and suffering, but God is quite extraordinarily good at taking 
what we hand him and making creative use of it.  For the first time, I 
could see the webbing of love and relationships that spread out from the 
wound my act had left. Aside from everything else, five beloved children 
saw the light who would otherwise never have been born. I felt redeemed.

Because I am, by choice, a Christian, I saw this in Lenten terms: that it's 
through the hard way of self-honesty that we find forgiveness and real 
peace. It's nuts that we, as Christians, should be so obsessed with sex 
when denial is a *far* more significant problem.  We turn away from the 
desert, the place where everything's laid open to the Light, because it 
looks like a scary place, not seeing that it's full of love and hidden 
nourishment.  The Light isn't the problem; our secret shame is, because 
shame is where denial takes root.

 From the time I came back to Christ as an adult, I don't think I ever 
denied the wrongfulness of what I'd done; I knew my actions required real 
repentance -- not a shallow "oops" but an acknowledgement of substantial 
sin. What I couldn't accept until Thursday was the possibility of God's 
gracious forgiveness. Like all other sins, denial can operate in two 
directions: we can refuse to accept that we've got something that needs to 
be repented of, or we can refuse to accept that we can be forgiven. But the 
second is just as much a hiding from the Light as the first.

I understand my younger self much better now, and I can look at that young 
woman, as well as her victim, with compassion. I can see her more 
objectively, but also more lovingly. Best of all, I've had a tiny foretaste 
of God's loving justice. If this is what it's like, I can live with it.

My friend and I went off to the Thursday noontime Eucharist. It was, for 
me, awash in joy.



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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.