Fred's Book Club: The Work of Forgiveness.

Greetings, fellow readers! Welcome to the Humpback Writers feature, our Wednesday (a.k.a. Hump Day) entry that looks at books and lets them look back at us. The writers may not actually have any humps, but the books have spines, so there is that.

Today we're preparing for Christmas, and while Advent is a season of joy, it's also a time for examination of conscience and learning to love our brethren. This will be helpful if we're going to be stuck with our brethren all Christmas Day at Aunt Tilly's house. But forgiveness is often more than we can stand to do, especially if the wound has been very deep. What is to be done?

Today's book is one of the smallest in our vast collection, at 71 pages, but is meant to help us in this work of forgiveness. Joan Mueller, Ph.D., is a professor of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, and also a professor of Christian spirituality. Forgiveness is one of the gigantic pillars of Christianity, something we all need and we're expected to give, so we might think Dr. Mueller has some useful thoughts. 

Forgiveness: Three Minute Reflections on Redeeming Life's Most Difficult Moments is a helpful book for those seeking to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. It is a series of meditations, broken into four sections of seven each, that can be literally read in three minutes. Each has a scriptural reading, a thought connected to it, and a spiritual exercise to help the reader. The exercises can take a lot longer than three minutes, of course, depending on how much thought we want or need to apply to them. But taken along the way, all can be useful, and if done one a day, the book can be completed in a month. I won't say painlessly -- forgiveness can be painful for everyone involved. But grudges can hurt a lot more.

Here's a sample page:

You may hate this kind of stuff. Dismiss it as nonsense or happy horse-hockey (or worse). Well, so do I, much of the time, and I used to all of the time. But I approached this with an open mind and I believe it was good for me.  

I picked this book up in the lobby of my Catholic church, when some of the publishers from New City Press came down for a visit. New City Press is not a Catholic publisher, but they seek to help any Christian or anyone looking into Christianity or anyone who needs to find faith. (And Hyde Park, New York, where they are based, is not far from where I live.) I wanted to support the small press, so I looked for a book that might be of interest, and this one surely was. I think it did help me make peace with some of the people against which I held grudges, even if they didn't know I was still mad. 

Finding peace with an angry world and the people in it can surely be a daunting task, but one particularly good to do, or at least try to do, at Christmastime. I thank Professor Mueller for her book, and New City Press for bringing it to my attention. But I'm still a work in progress.

Smash Wednesday.

Here comes that old man Lent again, ruining everybody's fun.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent in many (not all) Christian churches. (My Eastern Orthodox pals actually started the Great Lent on Monday.) I usually look forward to Lent; I could use a chance to catch a breath, try to start off on a good spiritual footing.

Last year I wrote about forgiveness during Lent; instead of giving up chocolate or alcohol, why not give up holding a grudge? And it's still a good idea, although perhaps impossible for my more, shall we say, Irish friends. I'd often heard that Irish Alzheimer's is when you forget everything but the grudge; recently I learned of a sweet Irish lady who's suffering from dementia, who still is sore at the friend who shot her in the rear end during a paintball match a generation ago.

So: Forgiveness. Perhaps I ought to take some time each day this season to think of those who -- hard to believe, I know! -- bear some grudge against me, hate me, or just don't like me. Say a prayer for each one. Say, "God, if you would, please bless this person. Please watch over this person, please keep this person in your heart, please press that smite button that Gary Larson said you have right there on your keyboard..."

Or perhaps that's not exactly what I ought to be saying.

I can't recall a time when I faced Lent with less enthusiasm. I'm not real rah-rah on myself right now -- Christianity, when exercised properly, is an excellent means of stripping away pleasant illusions about ourselves -- and I seem to be facing a number of problems for which I have no solutions. At times like that you only want someone (or Someone) to hand you an answer; everything else is just noise.

That's where I am today. God, perhaps you could give me some direction here? Or maybe just do a little smiting on my behalf...?

Ash Wednesday.

People have asked what I'm giving up for Lent, and I am a bit torn. I'd like to give up chocolate, but Valentine's Day falls on Sunday, and if I get any I am eating it. I know me better than to think otherwise.

Others say you should focus more on doing something positive rather than giving up something negative. I think you can do both at once, by which I mean focusing on forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a positive act; giving up something is a negative one. By "negative" I don't mean bad, I just mean that you remove something that was there. In this case, a debt you are owed.

We know that the Bible refers to our sins using the metaphor of debt, that when we harm others we owe them for it, that those who have harmed us owe us. One translation of that section of the Lord's Prayer is "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

I find this very useful, not just because I desperately want my debts forgiven, but also because it gives me a helpful visual aid for those who have sinned against me.

Yes, the old Parker Brothers Game of Life Promissory Note, which paves the road to penury and lands you in the Poor Farm at the end. Let's say this represents the grievance committed against me by another. Like, perhaps, vicious gossip spread by someone who meant to get me in trouble.

I decide I will obey Jesus and forgive this person. Not trying to make excuses for her; it could have been a completely evil act, and I still am under orders to forgive her. So there's my promissory note, what she would owe me on the Day of Judgment were I to hold on to the memory like an Irish elephant. But I determine that I am going to forgive this person.

The problem with forgiveness is that I can do it, and then find myself getting mad all over again when the incident comes to mind. C. S. Lewis wrote about this, about not only forgiving once but every time the memory angers us.*

By burning the note---usually just mentally; I don't want to run through board game supplies---I realize that I have to let it go, because it was a bearer bond and I destroyed it. I can no longer cash in that note. It's gone.

In that way, I can make something into ashes, and make it into something good, all at the same time.

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* I forget which book that was in---I may make it a Lenten mission to find out.