Tag Archives: forgiveness

Memoir Analysis #5: Harrison Scott Key

Leave a reply

http://www.amazon.com/How-Stay-Married-Insane-Story/

“Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, tells the shocking, “shot through with sharp humor” (The Washington Post), spiritually profound story of his journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.” Amazon.com summary.

Harrison Scott Key delivers another comic-tragedy and this is the most revealing of all. Another heart-wrenching memoir that addresses all the pain of betrayal and the struggle to survive.

Here are a few quick observations:

  • “Do I really care about three hundred pages on some stranger’s marriage? It turns out I did … There is an energy to HOW TO STAY MARRIED that I haven’t previously experienced in a memoir … Shot through with sharp humor” Jane Smiley, The Washington Post
  • Approximately 90k words spread over 38 chapters … just when you think it’s over, the pain and love and pain and forgiveness start all over again
  • “I read Harrison Scott Key’s hilarious, raw, bracing, profound memoir and have been recommending it to everyone I know. Read it! I’ve never read anything else quite like it.” Eleanor Barkhorn, The Atlantic

Key’s memoir of infidelity and forgiveness are presented in a realistic, painful yet hopeful way … and I speak with some experience on this topic. Yes, there’s some “god talk” included but not as much as you might think. Or, in other words, you’re likely to enjoy this book regardless of your faith or no faith perspective.

This book is definitely worth reading at least once. I’ve read it three times so far and find more humor and wisdom with each read.

One more memoir analysis to come within the next week. Please let me know if you have any questions on this or previous analyses offered.

To healing,

Patrick Cole

Forgiveness and Mercy Recap

Leave a reply

The Gottman Method speaks to looking at criticism as requests. One of their Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their method helps couples recover from relationship challenges. See this link for more information: https://www.regain.us/advice/general/what-are-the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-gottman-and-the-signs-of-relationship-strain/

For another variation on the theme for improving relationships, the Center for Action and Contemplation offers a series of meditations on Forgiveness and Mercy. Below is an excerpt from this week’s summary. For the full recap see: cac.org/daily-meditations/forgiveness-and-mercy-weekly-summary/

Praying to Forgive 

Brian McLaren identifies how prayers of petition help us to experience forgiveness:   

Since being wounded or sinned against is a terribly common experience, I suspect we need to pay more attention to it. In fact, being wronged is directly linked in the Lord’s Prayer to the reality of doing wrong; we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  

Father Richard Rohr says it well: Pain that isn’t processed is passed on. Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted. So we need to process our woundedness with God, and that processing begins by naming the pain and holding it … in God’s presence: 

Betrayed. Insulted. Taken advantage of. Lied to. Forgotten. Used. Abused. Belittled. Passed over. Cheated. Mocked. Snubbed. Robbed. Vandalized. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. Excluded. Disrespected. Ripped off. Confused. Misled.  

It’s important not to rush this process. We need to feel our feelings, to let the pain actually catch up with us…. I’ve found that it takes less energy to feel and process my pain than it does to suppress it or run away from it. So, just as through confession we name our own wrongs and feel regret, through petition we name and feel the pain that results from the wrongs of others…. We translate our pain into requests:  

Comfort. Encouragement. Reassurance. Companionship. Vindication. Appreciation. Boundaries. Acknowledgement.  

It’s important to note that we are not naming what we need the person who wronged us to do for us. If we focus on what we wish the antagonist would do to make us feel better, we unintentionally arm the antagonist with still more power to hurt us. Instead, in this naming, we are turning from the antagonist to God, focusing on what we need God to do for us. We’re opening our soul to receive healing from God’s ever present, ever generous Spirit. 

Reference: 
Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2011), 118–119. 

Restorative Justice: Remembering 9/11

Leave a reply

Today is 9/11. I remember how close I was to the World Trade Center twenty-three years ago. I remember how the call for revenge disturbed our already violence-soaked culture.

Today is 9/11. I am grateful for the wisdom highlights shared by Shane Claiborne, Karl Barth and Melissa Florer-Bixler below.

May we act in peace today for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Restorative Justice

Violence is contagious. Violence begets violence.… Pick up the sword and die by the sword. You kill us and we’ll kill you. There is a contagion of violence in the world; it’s spreading like a disease.  

But grace is also contagious. An act of kindness inspires another act of kindness…. A single act of forgiveness can feel like it heals the world.

Grace makes room … for justice that is restorative and dedicated to healing the wounds of injustice. But the grace thing is hard work. It takes faith—because it dares us to believe that not only can victims be healed, but so can the victimizers.

We are told that we choose whose world we want to live in. We’ll choose wealth or God. We’ll choose violence or God. We’ll choose nationalism or God. We’ll choose racial hierarchy or God. Each case is an example of a different and incompatible operational system. One of those systems, if we live by it, binds us in endless struggle and violence that leads to our own destruction, as well as the destruction of others…. 

Karl Barth, reflecting on forgiveness, writes, “Living by forgiveness is never by any means passivity, but Christian living in full activity.” Barth writes that, when we finally come before God, we will not be asked to give an account of our piety or morality. Instead, we will be asked, “Did you live by grace, or did you set up gods for yourself and perhaps want to become one yourself?” [2]  

References:  
[1] Shane Claiborne, Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2016), 5, 7. 

[2] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, trans. G. T. Thomson (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 152. 

[3] Melissa Florer-Bixler, How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2021), 73, 75–76. 

THREE GOODNESSES – Richard Rohr

Leave a reply

“the great thawing of all logic, reason, and worthiness”

Below is today’s reminder of the power of forgiveness from Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation.


Three Goodnesses 

Among the most powerful of human experiences is to give or to receive forgiveness. When we forgive, we choose the goodness of others over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own goodness in a way that surprises us.

We are still living in a world of meritocracy, of quid-pro-quo thinking, of performance and behavior that earns an award. Forgiveness is the great thawing of all logic, reason, and worthiness. It is a melting into the mystery of God as unearned love, unmerited grace, the humility and powerlessness of a Divine Lover.  

Without forgiveness, there will be no future.

People formed by such love are indestructible. Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness engenders in humanity. [2]   

Read this meditation on cac.org.
 
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2001, 2020), 155, 158–159, 162. 

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2019, 2021), 72. 

Facing the Hurt

Leave a reply

Facing the hurt and rediscovering mercy. Today’s post from the Center for Action and Contemplation quotes Anne Lamott and Richard Rohr as they speak to Step 8 of the Twelve Steps:

“Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

Facing the Hurt 

If you are bringing your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has anything against you, go first and be reconciled to him or her, and then come back and present your gift. —Matthew 5:23–24 

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.   
—Step 8 of the Twelve Steps 

Father Richard names the importance of acknowledging wrong and harm, while trusting in the gift of grace: 

Despite the higher economy of grace and mercy lived and taught by Jesus, he didn’t entirely throw out the lower economy of merit or “satisfaction.” They build on one another, and the lower by itself is inadequate to life’s truly great tasks—love, forgiveness, endurance of unjust suffering, and death itself. When we move to more mature stages of love and transformation, we don’t jump over earlier stages. We must go back and rectify earlier wrongs. Otherwise, there may be no healing or open future for us—or for those we have hurt.  

God fully forgives us, but the impact or “karma” of our mistakes remains, and we must still go back and repair the bonds we’ve broken. Otherwise, others may not be able to forgive us, nor will we likely forgive ourselves. “Amazing grace” is not a way to avoid honest human relationships. Rather, it’s a way to redo them—but now, gracefully—for the liberation of both sides. Nothing just goes away in the spiritual world; all must be reconciled and accounted for. [1]  

Anne Lamott recounts how her son held her accountable after she posted insensitive comments online, and reflects on experiencing mercy: 

[My son] asked me to apologize publicly. I didn’t want to, because the hundreds of people who attacked me were so vicious…. My son said that this was not the point. The point was that I had done something beneath me that had hurt a lot of people, and that I needed to make things right.  

We talked on the phone about this and he said: “I love you, but you were wrong. You did an awful thing. Please apologize. I’m not going to let this go. And I won’t let you go, either.” He was in tears. I was sick to my stomach.  

Later he sent an e-mail: “You need to do the right thing, Mom. I love you.”   

I wrote to the public that I was deeply, unambiguously sorry, even though I secretly still felt misunderstood…. I did this imperfectly, the best I could, admitting I was wrong. I expressed contrition. It was awful.  

My son was grateful, but distant for a time…. Extending mercy had cost him, and extending mercy to myself cost me even more deeply, and it grew us both, my having screwed up on such a big stage. It taught me that mercy is a cloak that will wrap around you and protect you…. It can help you rest and breathe again for the time being, which is all we ever have. [2]  

References:  
[1] Selected from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 10th anniv. ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 65. 

[2] Anne Lamott, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017), 41–42. 

cac.org/daily-meditations/facing-the-hurt/