Monday Morning Meditation #60: So Great Is God's Mercy toward Us

I stumbled through nearly another 40 psalms this week. I don't know what I was looking for exactly, or if I was looking for anything. I usually just read until something jumps out at me, something that I can relate to and something that I can understand at a visceral level. Being chronically happy (whether or not I have real reason to be so), I have trouble relating to songs of lament or pleas to make one's life better. I guess I am just used to taking what comes my way and finding the challenge to make it all better intriguing. Finally, though, I landed on the page with Psalm 103, a song of praise and hope. Now that's to my liking!

The psalm begins with the words:

Bless the LORD, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!

The psalm goes on to tell us how deeply merciful God is toward us, how he forgives us over and over again, how he is slow to anger, and he never punishes us as much as we deserve for our sins.

Then the psalm ends with nearly the same words with which it begins:

Bless the LORD, you His angels,
Who excel in strength, who do His word,
Heeding the voice of His word.
Bless the LORD, all you His hosts,
You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.
Bless the LORD, all His works,
In all places of His dominion.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Reading: Psalm 103

Meditation: I don't know about you, but the lines about God not punishing us as much as we deserve hit home for me. Thank God that God's mercy is so deep and strong and all-encompassing. There are at least four kinds of "trouble" I find myself, trouble that could call forth anger from an unkind God or frustration from an impatient God, but God is neither unkind nor impatient. God is merciful and patient beyond anything that we can imagine.

First, there are the times that I end up deliberately doing something I know will sorrow God. Usually, it is because I am tired and lazy, but there are also those times that I want my anger (or other emotion of the moment) and hang onto it when I should let it go away, especially when I can feel God trying to brush it from my life. Okay, that's definitely not a cool way to relate to God, and for God's forgiveness in such cases, I am grateful.

Second, there are the ethical and moral dilemmas that crop up from time to time. Often, they appear from the requirements of my job as a supervisor. How does one fire someone in a kindly fashion? Yet, if one keeps an employee who is not a team player or who is so incompetent in his or her professional field that others must constantly step in to pick up the slack or who is simply lazy and lets others do his or her work, then it is not fair to everyone else who makes an honest effort. And that is one of the easier moral dilemmas I deal with! Thank God for priests who are willing to think matters through with me from a moral and servant leadership point of view.

Third, there are the taskings that I occasionally get and don't know how to respond to. Sometimes I don't want to do them. Sometimes I don't know how to do them. Sometimes I don't feel qualified to do them. Nearly always I am concerned about their authenticity -- how do I know that they are for real? (That's when I go running to a priest for help.) So, given all those concerns, I nearly always also hesitate before displaying one iota of obedience. God forgives -- and expects the tasking to be completed (always, thankfully, with divine help).

Fourth, there are just the accidental slip-ups. These are the "naughty" things that happen just because we are all human. At least, I know I have a lot of company in these cases. I think not only God has to forgive us for our slip-ups, but we also have to stand ready to forgive ourselves so that we can accept God's forgiveness and know that it is meaningful.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer, repenting for the many times that I have relied upon God's mercy rather than doing as I ought to have done, thank Him for the expansiveness of His mercy, and beg Him to continue to show me His mercy for I shall continue to need it. Oh, and yes, as the psalm says, I will praise and bless His holy name. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too.)


For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

7 Quick Takes Friday #40

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

This is one of the strangest weeks I have spent in a while. It was a week with two Saturdays, no Korean Wednesday in Korea and no American Friday. That is what happens when you cross the International Date Line twice in one week. It has also been a high intensity week.

1. Last Friday (the Friday I spent in America), I spent most of the day at an EEO hearing for someone I helped into a leadership position three years ago (he did not know that his application had been turned down, and I had intervened) but who had not been accepted into an even higher leadership position, and he blamed me for that, so sued our organization and me for discrimination. Ironically, his "class" is overrepresented among our leaders and the "class" of the individual selected for the position is underrepresented, so he did not even have a prima faciae case. The investigator was rather put out that he had come in from out of town only to find out that the complainant had not checked the facts. Further, and this was pretty funny, I had nothing to do with the selection. I always delegate selection to the immediate supervisor, who uses a panel with external membership as well as internal to keep everything above board. In this case, I was two echelons above that supervisor. The lawyer for our organization did an excellent job in bringing all of this out. When I had to present the information that no one had wanted the complainant years ago for the low-level supervisory job he has held since then and that I had actually intervened, recommending that the immediate supervisor give him a chance, the complainant, who works at one of our remote sites and was participating in the procedure by phone, seemed overwhelmed and asked for a half-hour delay and recall so that he could compose himself and recoup from the stress he was feeling. While clearly the finding will be for our organization, I feel sorry for the complainant. It did not have to come to this if he could have put aside his ego and objectively looked at his own lack of qualifications compared to the qualifications of the person selected. The only good fallout was the opportunity of all of us -- the immediate supervisor and senior manager and I -- to forgive the complainant for all the extra work that we had to do in preparation for the investigation and negotiation. (Obviously, we did not negotiate since the case had no merit.) There could also have been ego issues, but no one in this particular chain considers himself/herself better than anyone else, so I don't think any offense was taken by anyone in that regard. I did not notice any self-defensive responses at the hearing. It is rewarding for me to see managers in my organization acting objectively and with compassion. I think everyone benefits from opportunities for forgiveness. For whatever he thinks was done unfairly to him, I hope the complainant will also ultimately feel the pleasure and release that forgiveness brings. (Note: picture drawn by Latuff, a Brazilian artist who does marvelous artwork -- take a look.)

2. On Saturday, we ran all over creation -- well, at least, the Central Coast California part of it. We picked up Doah's belonging from his old group home and visited a new possibility very near by, just minutes from us, and in the same housing development where his brother Shane lives. Before picking up the belongings, we had lunch at Dairy Belle, a quaint dinette where we could eat outside in the warm, dry California sunshine. We spent the evening at a members' night at the Monterey Bay aquarium, where they have new otter pups. (Note: If you recognize the picture, it could be because the Monterey Bay Aquarium was one of the locations of the Star Trek IV movie.)

3. On Sunday, I had a reception for visitors from my organization's oversight board, who would be spending Monday and Tuesday with us. Ironically, one of them is a former vice-president at a college in Vermont where I taught in the graduate program in the early 1990s. My old boss! It is always fun getting to see old bosses -- if one has had a good relationship. We did. Now we are a mutual admiration society -- if two can be considered a "society"! It' s interesting how relationships change as life goes on.

4. On Monday, our prayer group met at our house, as usual on the second Monday of the month for an inspirational movie. Sr. M had just heard what happened to Doah and was in tears. She is such a lovely person. The group has been praying for Doah, and things do seem to be working out for him. We watched a very short documentary because people mostly wanted to talk about the situation. Doah and Donnie did not want to be there since Doah has trouble sitting still for more than 5-10 minutes and Donnie does not like crowds, so they went out to McDonald's for a leisurely dinner where they could be alone together for Donnie's sake and Doah could run about as needed to expend his energy.

5. Tuesday was another eating day. Tough on the diet. One of our teams, including me, went out to dinner at an Afghan restaurant to do some team-building. We had had three members of the team come in from out of town -- two from Washington DC and one from North Carolina. Working together over the phone and Internet is quite different from working together in person. One person was quite new and is somewhat of a counterpart to me. I liked him immediately. It turns out he has worked with some of my former students.

6. There is not much to say about Wednesday and Thursday. I did not see much of either day. I got on the plane to Korea on Wednesday morning after forgetting my passport at home and making a mad dash back there for it and got off the plane on Thursday afternoon in Incheon, Korea, after having slept the entire flight. There I realized that having the passport in and of itself was not enough. The passport had only two pages left for stamps, including the extra pages I had sewn in when I was in Bahrain. Fortunately, Korean immigration found a page they had used earlier and put the new stamp on the old page. Otherwise, I might have had some difficulties at the US airport upon return. (Will have to get some extra pages immediately upon return since I have four more countries to visit in the next five weeks.) Then, too, I had not only forgotten my passport; I had forgotten to get money from the ATM. I arrived with $4 in my pocket. At least, there are ATMs in Korea, too, although the person meeting me, one of our senior managers, had to spot me bus fare until I could to one.

7. Friday was a tough day. (Yes, past tense here in Seoul, present tense in the USA.) I don't do jet lag, so I was wide awake and bushy-tailed, but I would rather have had the jet lag so I could have been a little out of it. I had come to conduct an evaluation of our programs. The senior manager responsible for this area told me that the local director was not doing her job, had crossed some legal and ethical lines, and that she would not listen to him. My job, while conducting the review of the work being accomplished at the site, would be to make the final judgment on whether or not she should remain and be trained or fired. I opted for the firing when we both learned more details about some of the things she was doing, including working for a competitor during work hours at our organization and throwing her work onto one of her subordinates. I gave the go-ahead to cut the cord to the senior manager and the junior manager who had come with him (and is the immediate supervisor of the local director). I was not present when they did it since that would have been micromanagement. I don't like doing these things. I prefer to reward people, not punish them, but some transgressions cannot be overlooked. Objectively, an easy call. Subjectively, a wrenching one, especially since this particular director was someone I had mentored a few years ago. (On a positive note, during my lunch hour I had a local deaf artist prepare Fr. Ed's name on a wall hanging in Korean calligraphy -- not the picture shown here, but very similar, in green on white, green being his favorite color, of course, given that he grew up in Ireland.)

And now I am off to bed to catch a flight back to the USA tomorrow afternoon. Crossing the international date line again, I will arrive tomorrow morning. For next week's 7 Quick Takes, I guess I will have to decide which of the two Saturdays I include as the real Saturday. May all my problems become as simple. May all yours be as simple.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Monday Morning Meditation #55: Why Do you Hide Yourself in Time of Trouble, Lord?

Sorry for the late posting of this. I tried to post it earlier this morning, but I could not get it to work. Apparently, I messed up something by telling Flash Player that I wanted to wait and not immediately install the latest update. I guess I was supposed to install right away because now I cannot get much of anything with Flash to work, and I am not being given the opportunity to update anymore. (And, yeah, I did restart the computer -- that old standby for when nothing else works -- but in this case that did not work, either. Sigh!) I guess I will have to have one of the technically competent members of the family -- sons, husband -- take a look and see what I did or failed to do. Sigh, again!

In the next couple of days, I will bring you up to date on my quandering. For now, I have continue reading the Psalms, making it only as far as the next Psalm, Psalm 10. It seems that all the psalms speak to one's daily life, but this one at this time was quite à propos. It begins with "Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" and later comments, "in his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak," pleading with God to "break the arm of the wicked and evil man."

Reading: Psalm 10

Meditation: The sentiments expressed in the psalm pretty much sum up the set of emotions that our family has been going through this week since finding out about the violation of Doah. Doah's faith has sustained him well; even the hospital medical personnel who examined him commented on it. I find it a little more difficult to immerse myself as deeply in contemplation, for unexpected reasons. There is so much going on in the wake of this that time simply does not suffice. While I generally do not put off my time with God, there seems to have been no choice. Yes, I know, there is always choice. Dealing with multiple agencies and multiple offices, having Doah at home, facilitating his interaction with well-meaning and supportive friends, and maintaining a link to the office which, right now, is experiencing a historic amount of change, about which I have to weigh in or which I have to turn into reality, simply exceeds a 24-hour day. Yet, I do know that if I find time for God, God will help me find time for the rest of it, so I am trying to do that -- and then the phone rings! Sigh! (I am doing a lot of sighing lately.)

As for the wicked taking advantage of the weak, well, no explanation is needed there. Doah is, however, stronger than one realizes. He did an extraordinarily good job of describing what happened to the sheriff's deputy, such that the deputy told him that he was the "best crime victim" he had ever interviewed, adding that he did not know how much of a compliment that might be and wished it were not the case. Doah was precise, did not mince words, and did not waver in the wake of multiple questionings.

It is the latter point, however, the plea for God to take action, that struck me. Nowhere does the psalm say that God will take action. It is simply David's plea that God do so. I wonder how often we want God to take care of all the hurts and bruises that come our way as a result of free will, which "bad" people also have -- and our definition of taking care of us is for God to hurt ("break the arm") of the other. I was proud of Doah this week. He did not make this kind of plea. Rather, he asked for three things: (1) Do not let the person who raped him out into society to rape others; (2) find a new group home for him where he will not be reminded of what happened; and (3) move his roommate of three years, who witnessed the events and is now afraid, with him. About his roommate, he was the most adamant. I wonder if those of us who are not mentally challenged would be as charitable.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer, repenting for ever thinking that God would hide from me. I will thank God for what He has not done (harm the wicked) so that Doah can practice charity and praise Him for working within Doah to be able to do that (and, of course, for being with Doah so overtly that Doah feels it all the time). As for any petitions, I will ask God as Doah has asked the human authorities: keep the "bad guy" away from other people, protect those who have not yet been harmed by him from ever being harmed by him, and let those who may have feared speaking out to do so now that Doah has taken the first step. I will also ask God to do what He does so well: somehow use this bad thing for greater good. Then I will spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Blest Guest Wednesday #12: What Does It Really Mean To Forgive? (Kathleen Smith)

At times, my crazy travel schedule interferes with my ability to post regularly, and I have to bring a little sanity to the blogging part of my life by asking for help. I am now entering one such crazy period. Some wonderful fellow bloggers have been willing to write guest posts for me on Wednesdays, hence the name "Blest Guest Wednesday."

As today's "Blest Guest," I asked Kathleen Smith (Heart 2 Heart), who comments on Blest Atheist frequently, to share something she thought would be interesting to BA readers. I think you will find her post interesting, so here goes:

What Does It Really Mean To Forgive?

Ever wonder if that apology you made to someone is really sincere or that the person truly forgave you? Perhaps there is someone in your life against whom you have held a grudge for whatever reason and from time to time you keep remembering and that grudge is the only thing standing between you and that person from resuming your relationship? Perhaps it's a family member who has hurt you on an emotional, physical or mental level. Do you realize that the longer you hold that in, the more your health continues to deteriorate?

We are not meant to hold lifelong grudges against people and even if people sincerely apologize, sometimes they are not forgiven by that person because too much time has passed. Too often these are relationships that need some healing, that cause a wound within our lives that is crying out to be healed. Instead, we tell that voice to be quiet or ignore it completely and continue to bury that feeling ever deeper.

Here are some steps to help you with that process. Even for me, occasionally I think about the relationship I had with my dad that has prevented me from talking to him for more than 13+ years now. It's been so long my current hubby, Steve, has never even met him. The one thing I need to do before it's too late is resolve my side of this disagreement, and here's how:

1. The person who offended this argument or disagreement must be the first one to make the first move. It's not the offended's turn to come to you. It will not be erased from you until you do your part. You will need to do what is right and leave the results to God to deal with.

2. God is honored by immediate obedience. The person could die while you wait and you don't want to live with the guilt and regret for the rest of your lives. So reach out to them as quickly as you can.

3. Others are healed by a vulnerable and honest confession. Healing awaits that confession of wrong doing. Even people who were not impacted initially by this are touched by your sincere apology.

4. If you aren't sure if you have any past issues to deal with, ask God to show them to you and listen to your heart to address any areas of your life or your past. Then go and immediately deal with them. Seek forgiveness for your past behavior.

5. Start immediately without any rationalization. Stop making excuses for why you conducted yourself that way. You had a wrong nature, and don't put it off or pass it off on others. It's easy to make excuses for things that are difficult.

6. Return completely without reservation. You need to have a heart-breaking admission of guilt. Your repentance is incomplete when you are holding something back or have other agendas for doing this. It is a difficult thing to do especially when time has passed. It will hurt, but it's necessary.

7. Repent without hesitation. Hold nothing back, and put your pride in your pocket. Seek legitimate forgiveness. It will benefit all your relationships in your life, even if they are not affected by this. It will make you feel like a new person.

8. Realize that there may not be an immediate forgiveness towards you. Let God deal with that end and work on their heart. As long as you have done your part, it's all God can ask.

9. If we don't forgive someone who seeks forgiveness from us, remember that God will not forgive us when we seek the same from him. Jesus told us that we are to forgive a total of seventy times seven if someone asks. Which means if they ask, and we forgive them, we are to forget it like God does. It may last within our memory but we should be willing to move forward in the relationship. If it's difficult, ask God to help you deal with that part of it.

I hope you get something from this message. I will update you on how it goes with my own forgiveness story with my father in a future blog. My goal is to not wait until it's too late, and I may not have tomorrow to do it!

"Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace"

A while back, I mentioned in a Monday Morning Meditation ("True Forgiveness Requires Love") a couple of years ago, the president of our union at the organization where I work died suddenly. His best friend took charge of the funeral, and his family flew from out of town. The friend gave the family a list of potential eulogists, with their backgrounds. They chose two others and me.

Had they been given the full background, they might have selected differently. The union president had opposed my being hired and not much time had elapsed since I had arrived for him to become supportive. He was, at best, collegial. I, too, was collegial. Actually, I forgave him. After all, he had lost; I had been offered the job over his dissent.

So, surprised but willing, I set about to write the eulogy, but I could not. The more I tried, the blanker the page became. The blanker the page became, the foggier my memory became. I could not think of one thing to write, let alone dreaming up those wonderful warm fuzzy phrases for starting and finishing. There really is not a lot of advance writing time for a eulogy, and so the night before the funeral I was facing the prospect of reading a blank sheet the next day.

I took a walk around our mission grounds where I go when I need special time alone to think and to commune with God. I asked God for help and was led to understand that I had to forgive this man. But I had forgiven him, I argued. No, was the response. Forgiveness is not simply the deliberate pushing aside of malice or resentment. True forgiveness springs from love.

You mean, I have to love this guy, honestly, seriously, fully love him? I took in that concept with more than a bit of incredulity. How would that be possible?

Yet, it must be possible. The realization, nestled in certainty, that the need to love him was the key to writing the eulogistic words sank deeply into my consciousness.

Well, as we know, with God all things are possible. As I began to think of the good things he had done for several of my employees, the times he had come to me to ask me to bend some rules for the good of one person or another or to take in someone who had run afoul of management in another division, and the way in which he had worked tirelessly, selfless, and humbly for the benefit of the employees, I began to feel both love and respect for him. I wish I had been able to achieve this level of forgiveness and love while he was alive. The minute that wish crossed my mind, the dam holding back the eulogistic thoughts broke, and ink splattered all over my paper. I had a eulogy, a really decent eulogy, thanks be to God.

The next day after I delivered the eulogy, my boss's boss said that, based on the warmth of my words, it must have been difficult for me to write that eulogy. How little did he know how right he was -- but for the wrong reason. Several days later, the union president's friend found me in my office and told me that the family asked him to relay to me how meaningful they had found my eulogy. They wanted me to know that their healing had begun with my last word.

Amazingly, God taught me a lesson in forgiveness and love at the same time that He used me to help a family. Two birds with one stone!

Thinking back on it, I cannot help but think of the words of one of my favorite songs (sung by Sinead O'Connor), often mistakenly attributed to St. Francis (definitely convergent with the Weltanschauung of St. Francis although it can only be traced as far back as a French-language version, published in La Clochette (The Little Bell) in 1912):

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith ;
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light
where there is sadness, joy
O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

(I have no idea why I am being led to re-post this particular story, with adaptation and added details. I guess someone needs to hear it.)

Monday Morning Meditation #16: True Forgiveness Requires Love

After zipping right along for the last two weeks, this week I got only as far as the next chapter of Numbers. I found the story in Chapter 12 as very relevant to today, to my life, and to the life around me. In this story, Aaron and his wife, Miriam, become upset that Mose had married a Cushite woman and then tried to put themselves on a par with him, saying that God had spoken to them, too (In dreams). Now, there's a great lack of humility. The nasty root of all it seems to be jealousy (and failure to mind one's own Ps and Qs, as the saying went when I was a child.) So, God called them all together and told them why He spoke directly to his servant, Moses, who was a humble man. God was not happy with Miriam and Aaron, however, and after He left, Aaron noticed that Miriam had become white with leprosy. She had to be removed from the community. Aaron turned to Moses, asking him for help, and meek Moses, having apparently never taken umbrage at a brother he clearly loved, turned to God, who ultimately relented and cured Miriam.

Reading: Numbers 12: 1-16

Meditation: This story struck me as containing an important lesson, but I had to read the chapter several times to determine what that might be. (If someone more astute than I considers the lesson to be different than what I have analyzed it to be, please correct me. I love correction; it is the source of my learning.) At first, I thought the story was mainly about jealousy, i.e. Aaron's and Miriam's jealousy of the relationship that Moses had with God. Then, there was the issue of the sister-in-law that they did not like, and also the sense of self-importance expressed in a form of self-aggrandizement as they noted that God communicated with them, too. (Obviously, in a manner different from the way He communicated with Moses -- which could make a person jealous. Each of us has our own individual relationship with God. The relationship that one person has with God should not make another person jealous, but since God gifts individuals differently and human nature being what it is, I could see the chance of baseless jealousy developing.)

After thinking through all that, however, I posit that the story is more about forgiveness and love, the two being inextricably interwoven. How well I know about that woof and warp! A couple of years ago, the president of our union at the organization where I work died suddenly. His best friend took charge of the funeral, and his family flew from out of town. The friend gave the family a list of potential eulogists, with their backgrounds. They chose two others and me. Had they been given the full background, they might have selected differently. The union president had opposed my being hired and not much time had elapsed since I had arrived for him to become supportive. He was, at best, collegial. I, too, was collegial. Actually, I forgave him. After all, he had lost; I had been offered the job over his dissent. So, surprised but willing, I set about to write the eulogy, but I could not. The more I tried, the blanker the page became. The blanker the page became, the foggier my memory became. I could not think of one thing to write, let alone dreaming up those wonderful warm fuzzy phrases for starting and finishing. There really is not a lot of advance writing time for a eulogy, and so the night before the funeral I was facing the prospect of reading a blank sheet the next day. I asked God for help and was led to understand that I had to forgive this man. But I had forgiven him, I argued. No, was the response. Forgiveness is not simply the deliberate pushing aside of malice or resentment. True forgiveness springs from love. You mean, I have to love this guy, honestly, seriously, fully love him? I took in that concept with more than a bit of incredulity. How would that be possible? Well, as we know, with God all things are possible. As I began to think of the good things he had done for several of my employees, the times he had come to me to ask me to bend some rules for the good of one person or another or to take in someone who had run afoul of management in another division, and the way in which he had worked tirelessly, selfless, and humbly for the benefit of the employees, I began to feel both love and respect for him. I wish I had been able to achieve this level of forgiveness while he was alive. The minute that wish crossed my mind, the dam holding back the eulogistic thoughts broke, and ink splattered all over my paper. I had a eulogy, a really decent eulogy, thanks be to God. The next day after I delivered it, my boss said that, based on the warmth of my words, it must have been difficult for me to write that eulogy. How little did he know how right he was -- but for the wrong reason. Several days later, the union president's friend found me in my office and told me that the family asked him to relay to me how meaningful they had found my eulogy. They wanted me to know that it was my words that had started the healing process for them. Now I cannot begin to relay to you the flood of emotions that passed through and out of me upon hearing that, but the most important one was gratitude -- gratitude to God for helping me find the love I needed to write the words the family needed, for the memorable lesson on forgiveness, for a divinely induced change in my attitude toward the person I was eulogizing, for being allowed to be His instrument in healing the family (or at least beginning to heal the family), for the healing that this experience brought me, and for the spiritual growth through which He had led me compassionately but resolutely. How I love God's lessons!

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on giving me lessons, to repent for times that I have been a slow learner or even rejected a lesson that seemed too difficult, to give thanks for His compassion and patience, as well as His resoluteness, and to offer praise for His ability and willingness to reach a person as dense as I can be sometimes/often.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any new understanding with which He is willing to bless me and, if nothing else, then welcoming nothing but His presence. The sheer joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week, remembering to forgive others as God forgives us. May you be blessed by the love which follows.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about today's reading or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some day my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

The Boy in White

For some time, I have wanted to post about the boy in white, but I have hesitated because the story appears in my book, Blest Atheist, and I have generally posted excerpts from that book and my other publications on Mahlou Musings, rather than here. There are differing audiences between the two blogs, but I think the story can also appeal to readers of this blog. So, I will summarize the story here. You can find the longer, more complete story that is closer to the original in the book on Mahlou Musings.

The story of the boy in white intertwines with many of the leitmotifs of this blog. I began this blog with discussions of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and blessings, and the story of the boy in white, which comes from my childhood, contains these leitmotifs as well as hints of the supranormal/angelic, which have also been discussed here at various times. Here is the story in brief:

On one bright, cold winter day, I dragged my sled three houses down our New England street to our neighbor’s teton-shaped hill, where all the children in our area of town gathered to race down to the mostly untraveled country road below on sleds, cardboard, or whatever else was available. I pulled my sled up the hill, waving to the other children in the neighborhood but mainly concentrating on the anticipated thrill of the ride. We were a community of children in the sense that we all knew each other, but our sport was an individual one. We did not share adrenaline-spurred shrieks of fun, but rather we quietly felt the thrill that defined the fun of New England downhill sledding.

That afternoon as I was pulling my one-person wooden sled up the hill a third time, I noticed a young boy, clad all in white and definitely not adequately covered for the sub-zero temperature that rosied our noses as they protruded from the scarves wrapped around our necks and faces and tucked into the hoods on our coats. I puzzled over the boy in white only momentarily as I mounted the hill and then the sled and began my third downhill run toward the road. Suddenly, about half-way down the hill, the boy in white, well blended with the surrounding snow in my visual field, began moving across the path over which my sled was about to speed.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled. I was as much annoyed at his being in my path as I was afraid of hurting him. He stepped back, and I briefly caught his sad look as I zipped past.

The memory is old and the details lodged in the mind of an 8-year-old whose perception of the world had moments of extremism. Therefore, I will not insist that every detail was precisely as I remember it today. What I do remember precisely, however, was being shaken by my own unkind words. I hurried home, towing my sled and a bundle of regret and concern. Somebody had to help the boy in white! He was wandering through the New Hampshire cold with no coat! He would freeze on the hill or anywhere else in our neighborhood. He seemed so oblivious to his surroundings and to the cold. He must be poor, indeed, I thought. We did not have much when we were children, but we always had warm clothes, and we were always bundled up, displaying a “cared for” look.

“Ma,” I called as I dropped the rope of the sled and ran into the house. “There is a boy on the hill without a coat. He is going to freeze! We have to help him!”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. I could not point him out through our window, so we set off for the hill. By the time we got there a few minutes later, however, he was nowhere to be found. We looked farther afield, but we saw no lad in white. Ma asked some of the other children, but none remember seeing him. I was at a loss to explain to Ma why he was not there, but she was not angry this time. In spite of her inability to love her children in an altruistic manner -- indeed, she was a highly abusive parent, one frequently emotionally out of control -- whenever someone in the greater community needed help, Ma was always jolly on the spot. Those two seemingly mutually exclusive attitudes — cruelty to her children and kindness to the community — made it difficult for us children to understand Ma. It also made it difficult for the community to understand our reaction to Ma for the community’s experience of her has always been positive.

As for the boy in white, I never saw him again. My friends insisted that he never was there, that he was a figment of my imagination that had frozen in the cold and was hallucinating snow images. Not a boy in white but a boy of snow. Still, I can see him today as clearly as I saw him on the hill so long ago. Today, I wonder if he was not there to teach me a lesson in kindness, in neighborly love — and to reveal perhaps why Ma may, indeed, live in grace, in spite of all her earlier cruelty and self-absorption for when there was a need for a Good Samaritan, Ma was usually the first volunteer. Perhaps God was using her, too? If God could use an atheist, as I was for so many years, then perhaps a believer with a temper, like Ma, might also be a potential instrument.

The long-ago lessons of the boy in white, unspoken lessons that allowed my subconscious, rather than conscious, mind to develop a morals-based value system, also showed me two important things that have dramatically shaped my life. First, I realized that day that there were two faces to Ma. That provided the foundation for the forgiveness that God required of me years later and which came easily once God pulled me out of my beloved bramble bushes. What God forgave me, I can certainly forgive others. Where God took me back, I can certainly take back others. Tit for tat gains nothing for no one. Forgiveness heals. That is one of the great lessons God has taught me on more than one occasion.

The second conclusion I came to all those years ago on the hill was that unless I was careful I would grow up to be the same hothead as Ma: my instinct had been to yell at the boy in white. Certainly, I did not want that. From then on, I worked hard to be the opposite of Ma. (Of course, I would tell her so from time to time when she was in the middle of beating, kicking, biting, or otherwise abusing me, and that did nothing to endear me to her; rather, I usually got an extra helping of the physical abuse as a result of my “big mouth.”)

How young I was when the boy in white crossed my path! Decades later, I can only conclude that God has always been with me. I have just been slow in seeing the linkages. I am grateful that now I can see them. Once again, God is spoiling me (and I love it).

Monday Morning Meditation #5: Forgiveness

I made it through another 22 chapters of Genesis this week, almost reaching the very end of this book at last. (It feels like it has been a slow journey, but the stops along the way have been worth it.) This week Chapter 50 halted the smooth flow of my reading. It was something that Joseph said that set me to ruminating.

Reading: Genesis 50:19

Meditation: Joseph met his brothers who had earlier sold him into Egyptian captivity. They feared that he would avenge himself after Jacob's (Israel's) death, but Joseph, who had done well for himself in Egypt, was simply glad to see them. "Fear not," he said, "for am I in the place of God?" In other words, only God can avenge or judge or sentence. We are not in the position of God, and so we must simply forgive.

But forgiveness is not simple, not even when we think we have indeed forgiven. When I first came to faith, God made it clear that I was supposed to learn to forgive, starting with my extremely abusive mother. I reasoned if God had forgiven her, who was I not to do so. Making that first phone call after years of not talking to her was difficult but worth it for both of us. Having made it over this hurdle and into the path of being able to honor one's father and mother, I prided myself (pride goeth before a fall?) on my ability to forgive. God has a way of deflating pride, however, with one prick of the balloon. I clearly had NOT learned the forgiveness lesson well enough, and so God gave me another chance to learn it. (I seem to get lots of second, third, fourth chances -- I am somewhat of a slow learner, being by nature both rebellious and skeptical.)

In the second instance, the person I needed to forgive was the union president who had held up my being hired as a senior manager in the organization where I now work. I forgave him for that. It was pretty easy to do so. After all, I was hired. Without going into all the details here (I will post the full story later), the situation complexified considerably when the union president died unexpectedly. I, of all people, was asked to present a eulogy. Up until the day before the memorial service, I could not write a word. Every time I tried, nothing came to mind. I had convinced myself that I had forgiven this man, but on a long walk around the mission that I took the night before the memorial service, God led me to understand that while I had, on the surface, forgiven this man, I had not forgiven him deeply and completely because I felt no love for him. Understanding this broke the emotional barrier I had thrown up, and I felt much love for him, love I wish I could have expressed to him while he was alive. Out of that flowed a eulogy. Afterward, his family told a mutual acquaintance that the eulogy I gave began a healing process for them. (God is so marvelously capable of using us to help others at the same time that we are being taught -- what an incredible teacher!)

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for greater willingness and readiness to forgive, to express my regret for not truly forgiving those people I should have by forgetting any transgressions against me and loving the transgressors sincerely, to give thanks for His willingness to love me in spite of my occasions of uncharitable thinking, and to offer praise to a God who cares enough about us to teach us.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who never gives up on me, no matter how slow a learner I am.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 50:19 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, perhaps you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with love and forgiveness!