This world has need for many words that have not yet been invented, to describe things that exist and are not yet named. One of my favourites is "sprocket strips", for the perforated strips on fan-fold computer paper. I take modest credit for "spinnerkinks" (the twists that form in the curly line to a telephone handset) and "wooglies" (the lumps of dirty slush that form in cars' wheel wells during the winter).

Well, a friend (hi Cynthia!) has just presented me with a fine new verb, invented by a friend of hers: to gunnysack. To gunnysack is to take a small legitimate grievance and tuck it into a sack which you carry over your shoulder. Then, when the grievance is really well-ripened--especially when you need ammunition and don't have any--you take the grievance out and lob it at the offender, who has (of course) long since forgotten about the whole business. As in "You never thanked me for the flowers I brought you on our fifth wedding anniversary!"--said during a marital brouhaha on the tenth wedding anniversary. Gunnysacked grievances are, of course, infinitely recyclable; just because you've lobbed it once doesn't mean you can't lob it again. And again. And again.

Of course, once you look at the pattern, gunnysacking becomes too childish and manipulative for words. I was all set to write something about the sheer silliness of this sort of behaviour, and how unChristian it is--and then I picked up the paper and saw an article about a lawsuit brought by a group of people who were, as children 20 years ago, sexually abused by their priests, in Cornwall, Ontario. For 20 years, they've lived with that damage, and the diocese kept the lid on--until now.

Oh.

'Tain't quite that simple, is it?

Is it gunnysacking to confront very old wrong? Where are the boundaries of forgiveness, when the damage was a long, long time ago, but the victims' lives have been profoundly shaped by it? What if the perpetrators are still in the position to damage other people? What if the victims were in no position to confront what had been done? Is there no role for justice at all? Is forgiveness the Christian thing to do, or is it making like a doormat? When is it good tough-love to say "Just put it behind you and get on with life"--and when is that only compounding the original injury?

What was good about the word "gunnysack" is that it helped me sort things out. There really is gunnysacking--I used to live with a virtuoso gunnysacker, so I know!--but the Cornwall case, whatever its outcome, ain't it. This may sound self-evident or trivial, but in fact it's a distinction that's painfully easy to get wrong: we are supposed to forgive booboos, but we are supposed to confront real wrong, even when the victims are ourselves instead of others. But too often, we nurse grievances over the booboos and fail to stand up to the wrong. Or demand forgiveness for real wrong, while being unable to let go of grievances ourselves. Or we see grievances where none in fact exist, while being blithely oblivious to the effects of our doings and un-doings on others. Too often, we go by "the validity of our feelings" instead of by some sort of reasonable criteria for what's real wrong and what's just ordinary booboos. And far too often, the real damage is only to our own unmuzzled egotism...

The problem comes from black-and-white thinking: ALWAYS forgive; ALWAYS confront. Like any other absolute statement, each of these has about a 50% chance of being wrong in practice if applied without serious thought and discernment.

Ultimately, however, forgiveness has to win. Even when your very real enemies, people who really have done you harm, must go off apparently unscathed, without really understanding what they have done or how it affects you--even then, you must "let go and let God", for the sake of your own soul. It's far too easy for Just Anger, held onto too long, to slide over the line into the Sin of Anger and to pickle a person's soul. No cause, however, righteous, is worth that price.

I hope the Cornwall people see justice done, however the court case turns out. But I know, sadly, that there are far too many cases where justice is not done, or cannot be done (if for no other reason, because some quite nasty soul-sins aren't in the Criminal Code). Sometimes to look at life honestly is to have to swallow real and grave Wrong with no hope of protest, much less redress--but don't pretend it didn't happen, or it didn't hurt and do harm, even if all you can do is to hand it all over to God's later justice, in the life to come.

Ultimately that's all we can trust. God's justice is infinitely greater than our own, infinitely more able to sort it all out in the end with both mercy and insight. I hope I can find it in myself to forgive what I have to forgive, as I hope to be forgiven myself. To paraphrase a much more famous prayer, Lord, grant us all the courage to confront what really does need to be and can be confronted, the fortitude to let go both of the trivial and of what cannot be fixed in this life--and the wisdom to know the difference.

But oh, that third one is by far the hardest!