This year at Thanksgiving I realized how radically my story about Thanksgiving has changed over the last while. The story about Thanksgiving with which I was raised is more or less summarized in this Chuck Colson commentary from last Thursday. Chuck tells this story about the “pilgrims”:
In April of 1623—three years after the first Pilgrims landed—the transplanted Englishmen and women planted corn and other crops. A good harvest was essential to their survival. But in the weeks following the planting, it became clear that a dry spell was turning into a drought.
Pilgrim father Edward Winslow recorded their distress in his diary. “It pleased God, for our further chastisement,” he wrote, “to send a great drought; insomuch as in six weeks . . . there scarce fell any rain.” The crops began to shrivel up “as though they had been scorched before the fire . . . God,” Winslow wrote, “which hitherto had been our only shield and supporter, now seemed in His anger to arm Himself against us. And who can withstand the fierceness of His wrath?”
Posted in Forgiveness, Nationalism, Poverty, Religion, United States | 6 Comments »
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Dear Jesus
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007Dear Jesus,
I guess you’ve been deluged with birthday prayers. If you’ve had time to open them all you’ve got to be worried. I am, hence the email. There was some talk of a return visit last time you were here. Got to tell you, now would be good. Now would be excellent. So I would like to invite you, in your capacity of the Prince of Peace, to visit Australia as part of a second world trip this year.
Posted in Forgiveness, Peace, Poverty | 6 Comments »
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What stops you forgiving?
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007H/T to Byron for this question.
Posted in Forgiveness | 13 Comments »
criminal insanity
Monday, October 1st, 2007Last week, a couple of middle aged men went to a care home to meet an 85 year old lady called Jean Gambell. Soon afterwards she had a slight stroke, which it was thought may have been brought on by the reunion.
It is hardly surprising. Jean Gambell was meeting her brothers for the first time in 70 - yes that is not a typo, that is SEVENTY - years. As a teenager of 15, Jean had been incarcerated due to mental illness, as a result of her stealing a few small coins. The brothers allege that the coins were found later.
She was then in the system for an entire lifetime, losing contact with her family and by any reakoning completely wasting her life. Enough one would think, to send anyone over the edge of mental instability even if they were sane to start with. Yet the brothers found a frail old lady, who could identify them by name and showed remarkably little bitterness for her lot in life. More here.
Other than being entirely flabbergasted by the whole sorry tale, I would like to know:
- If there are other people who have been involuntarily detained for long periods of time.
- What it says about a society that it ‘loses’ the records of people in its’ care.
- What it says about us that we live in a society that can lock someone up for an entire lifetime for no crime, without remand or appeal.
- What it says about us that an 85 year old lady is sane enough to recognise relatives after 70 years, but she is not sane enough to be listened to when she is telling her story or come to that was so feeble minded at 15 that she was incarcerated on the dubious charge of stealing a few small coins.
Surely we should all be thoroughly ashamed that we live in a world where this could happen.
Posted in Doing Life, Ethics, Forgiveness, Power, What can we do? | 13 Comments »
The Blame Game
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007I was reading this last week about the great fire of London, which began September 2, 1666, and burned for three days, destroying most of the City of London, inside the old Roman wall. What really intrigued me about the story was the way in which people were so eager to find someone to blame for the fire. Victims of the fire blamed immigrant groups and Roman Catholics for starting it, and there were lynchings and violence against them in the streets.
I couldn’t help but note the similar way in which we as a nation have reacted to 9-11. Gotta have someone to blame, and then use violence against them. I grew up seeing the United States as a Separate and Different nation than the England from which we sprang. Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve had a kind of re-education, and I’ve realized how very much we are culturally descended from England.
Posted in Compassion to Self, Forgiveness | 11 Comments »
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Forgiveness and story
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007I want to draw your attention to a brilliant and true stowaway and theft story from marine engineer Jonathan, one of my favorite people. It seems one of Jonathan’s shipmates was caught red handed with stolen items in his cabin, and Jonathan was part of the investigational team. Jonathan captures rather well the painful sense of being the victim of a breach of trust. M_____, the thief, asked him for a second chance. Jonathan writes:
He caught me off guard. I looked at him. “I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re for real, or if you’re just playing me for a chump. The trust is gone. It’s not like a light switch, turn it on, turn it off, turn it on again.”
At the same time, Jonathan was reading Les Miserables, in which the bishop is presented with a similar choice when the gendarmes bring Jean Valjean caught red handed with the bishop’s silver dishes. The bishop replies:
“Ah, there you are!” said he, looking towards Jean Valjean, “I am glad to see you. But! I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them with your plates?”
After explaining to the gendarmes that Jean Valjean was on the up and up
The bishop approached him, and said, in a low voice: “Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.”
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of this promise, stood confounded. The bishop had laid much stress upon these words as he uttered them. He continued, solemnly: “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”Posted in Forgiveness | 12 Comments »
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Movie Review: Red Dust — What is Forgiveness?
Friday, March 9th, 2007We have the right to say that it hurt.
-Alex MpondoRed Dust is a movie about apartheid, truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It’s a combination of mystery and morality play that kept me riveted from beginning to end.
The movie really helped me cement my new, post-evangelical understanding of forgiveness. It’s a much more demanding forgiveness which requires both victim and perpetrator to fully inventory the exact nature and consequences of harm, and then choose to re enter relationship. It’s a dizzying, overwhelming, intense, gut wrenching type of forgiveness which requires a lot.
As the movie progresses, you can see that these characters, in the process of wrestling through memories they had forgotten, and would rather continue to forget, are becoming more alive, and more human.
Having looked the beast in the eye, having given and received forgiveness, let us shut the door on the past, not to forget it, but to allow it not to imprison us.
-Desmond TutuIt seems to me that international peace is impossible without this type of forgiveness. What do you think?
*warning: this movie contains graphic depictions of brutal torture
Posted in Forgiveness, Movie Reviews, Peace, Torture | 12 Comments »|