It was a bad work week.
I knew going into this job that working at a chrch would be fraught with landmines. Many of you warned me, I remember.
On some level, we all know that chrch is a place for people with problems. It's a place that's supposed to embrace the socially awkward, the lonely, the oddballs, the people with anger issues, with pride issues, with tons of relational baggage.
But even though I KNOW that, when my day to day work collides head on with people's senses of entitlement and anger and pride and awkwardness--it's so easy to get thrown.
All week, I've been up in arms about "THESE PEOPLE". THESE PEOPLE who don't read the instructions on the website I painstakingly spent weeks on. THESE PEOPLE who complain about the food we serve, who are convinced that the chrch has neglected their microscopic (YES, THAT is bitterness) niche of the New York City social landscape, who want to know WHY they can't have things THEIR WAY at the most convenient spot and time of THEIR life. THESE PEOPLE have ticked me off all week long.
So of course, today's sermon was on forgiveness.
Two things stuck out.
1) Not forgiving ultimately sucks more for ME than for the person I'm refusing to forgive.
Anger is delicious. Oh yes, plotting out icy-cold comeback emails to that guy who insulted me, re-playing an interchange over and over and telling anyone who will listen about that obnoxious phone-caller--anger and unforgiveness is delicious. But in the end, I lose.
Frederick Buechner on the matter:
"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." Not forgiving enslaves me and tempts me to think that I am better than I really am. Like Anne Lamott said--not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.
2) To be able to forgive, we have to avoid making cartoons out of people.
Cartoon: A ridiculously exaggerated depiction of someone. If I'm hellbent on not forgiving someone, it's sure helpful to turn them into a cartoon. So for example, someone who has lied to me once--they are now forever and only a LIAR. Someone insulted me by email--they are a forever and only a JERK.
Oh-for the clarity that comes from a faithful memory! I too have lied. I too have said callous, careless words in passing. But of course, that doesn't make me a total liar or a jerk right? I have my good moments too. And so that is what I have to extend to the offending party. Sigh.
"Too many people come into community to find something, to belong to a dynamic group, to find a life which approaches the ideal. If we come into community without knowing that the reason we come is to discover the mystery of forgiveness, we will soon be disappointed." - Jean Vanier
