Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
I don’t like it, and I’m sure you don’t either. It’s when you’re confronted with something you have done wrong.
You want to run; you want to hide. Perhaps you make excuses, blame others, or downplay the whole problem—anything to avoid taking responsibility.
It’s a horrible place, but it can also be where light can come.
It’s holding up the crime sheet and feeling the dark acceptance of wordless guilt and shame.
I read this recently.
The spiritual director has the double task of holding up the demands of absolute responsibility and the promise of absolute forgiveness.
It is out of such demands and promises that we assist at each other’s birth. Alan Jones (from the preface of Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther)
Responsibility needs ForgivenessWords and sentences grab my attention. They make me stop and have me roll them around in my thinking.
- double task
- holding up the demands of absolute responsibility
- holding up the promise of absolute forgiveness
- assist at each other’s birth
It’s a shaking of hands with a stranger. The darkness of your actions shakes hands with the light of forgiveness, and darkness disperses. Forgiveness (both human and divine) will always overwhelm dark places of guilt and shame.
Something of Edens’s garden beauty and strength is birthed. If you’ve ever witnessed this happen, you know what I mean. You’ve been a midwife to something miraculous.
Acceptance needs absolute forgiveness, or we will continue living in a dark hole of self-loathing. Going over and over our crime sheet and making the past the focus.
Left-handed powerTwo hands. One is more dominant. For most of us, this would be the right hand.
The right hand is the hand of power, strength, and force. It’s the thumping down on a desk demanding justice, revenge, and recompense. It’s power over, not power with or power for.
But I’m interested in the left hand.
Martin Luther had this thought about God and that God offers a kind of ‘Left – handed’ power.
In my research, I found this writing.
Unlike right-handed power, left-handed power doesn’t force or coerce. It doesn’t threaten or bully.
Left-handed power isn’t afraid to show weakness or vulnerability for the sake of something greater. It is a power that grants freedom.
It is a power in favor of relationship and community, that rejects the idea that “might makes right.”
It is the kind of power shown throughout Jesus’ life and in his death. Luther described the cross as the left-handed power of God. Rev. Kristabeth Atwood
Which hand are you focused on?
The right hand clasping a crime sheet, or the left hand open wide with forgiveness.
So many are focused on the dirt. There is a pull to the dark places.
This is where we need others to remind us of left-handed power. People to hold up the promise of absolute forgiveness.
Absolute absolutionIn the Anglican (Episcopalian) church I attend, there is a very special moment in the liturgy. It’s a sacred moment – quiet, sincere, serious.
We, as a gathered community of failures, say these words:
Merciful God,
we have sinned in what we have thought and said,
in the wrong we have done
and in the good we have not done.
We have sinned in ignorance:
we have sinned in weakness:
we have sinned through our own deliberate fault.
We are truly sorry.
We repent and turn to you.
Forgive us, for our Saviour Christ’s sake,
and renew our lives to the glory of your name. Amen.
The priest then steps to the front and declares these words over the needy.
THE ABSOLUTION
Through the Cross of Christ, God have mercy on you,
pardon you and set you free. Know that you are forgiven and be at peace.
God strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in life eternal.
Amen.
I always watch my vicar as she says, ‘Know that you are forgiven.’
I want to see the seriousness of the declaration.
Every verbal and non-verbal communication she makes must mirror that which Christ has declared over me.
I need reminding. You do too. Embrace the gift of the lefthand.
You are forgiven. Be at peace.
Quotes to consider- Martin Luther called it “left-handed” power. Right-handed power consists of the blatant demonstration of power over people. Left-handed power is the quiet demonstration of power in people, the power to stir up an appetite for God no matter what may be happening in someone’s life. SoulTalk is about left-handed power. We’ll see God’s right-handed power when he returns to earth. For now, we can speak into people’s lives with a power that can change them from the inside out. Larry Crabb Soul Talk
- Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. Simone Weil, Waiting for God
- I’ve been a priest, then an ex-priest. Husband, then ex-husband. Amazed crowds one night and lied to friends the next. Drunk for years, sober for a season, then drunk again. I’ve been John the beloved, Peter the coward, and Thomas the doubter all before the waitress brought the check. I’ve shattered every one of the Ten Commandments six times Tuesday. And if you believe that last sentence was for dramatic effect, it wasn’t. Brennan Manning All is grace
- You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
- If we don’t accept what’s true about ourselves, we won’t see it clearly, and if we don’t see it clearly, we’ll be less able to deal with it. Rick Hanson. Resilient
- Forgiveness is a gift of unearned extravagance and generosity. Robert Harvey & David Benner Choosing the Gift of Forgiveness.
- Perhaps we tend to believe in the hard work of forgiveness more than we believe in or expect it as a miracle of grace. It is so hard to trust that you have truly been forgiven. Robert Harvey & David Benner Choosing the Gift of Forgiveness.
- Forgiveness takes brokenness seriously and affirms that guilt is real, but also affirms that guilt is not the last word. Robert Harvey & David Benner Choosing the Gift of Forgiveness.
- Accepting absolute responsibility. What is it like to be confronted with what you rather keep hidden?
- The promise of absolute forgiveness. What thoughts and feelings get stirred up in you when absolute forgiveness is offered?
- Why do we need others to remind us of the gift and promise of forgiveness?
Barry Pearman
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
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