FORGIVENESS AT THE HOLIDAY TABLE

| Anne Williamson |

All forgiveness involves grief… I will never know what it feels like to be a boy unconditionally loved by his father. The story of our marriage will never be a fairy tale again. I have broken people I love with my own brokenness. Those 10 years, I’ll never get those back. 

This is what makes forgiveness so hard. It’s also what makes it sticky. Our grief deserves space; we must give it time. And yet, hold on too long and you begin to identify with… no, as it. The grief becomes entangled in your self – shaping the stories you tell, the life you create.

My favorite definition of forgiveness comes from a 1990 guest on The Oprah Winfrey show named Harold. Paraphrasing him, Oprah says, “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different.” It’s not condoning or excusing; it’s accepting what was, and even what currently is…

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SPIRITUAL MUSCLE TRAINING

| ANNE WILLIAMSON |

I love to garden. No, that's not broad enough: I love all yard work. I do. I love being outside, digging in the dirt and listening to nature. I love the physicality; sawing off a dead limb on a tree makes me feel strong and capable. And, I love its tangible results; spend a few minutes and that bush takes shape; spend a few hours and that garden bed is alive with new colors. It's satisfying. Me + it = something I can see, a project done. 

I love spirituality too, but hardly because it behaves similar to gardening. The nature thing is there, but often it's incredibly frustrating how head and heart and intangible the whole thing feels. Whether your chosen path to connect is meditation or chanting or "accepting Jesus" or whatever, you + it doesn't always = peace, enlightenment, you name it. Changing the shape of our hearts and minds, our lives, the world, is slow work, satisfying often only in time.   

This is why I'm starting to think it takes real practice and discipline. Why "they," whoever they are, were wise folks when they named the methods we use to connect and grow in love exactly that: spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines. I'm presently smack dab in the middle of a 21-day meditation challenge, and I can hear my spirit saying, "This is what is required, if you want peace." Not necessarily meditation, but a commitment to train my "spiritual muscles," a commitment to practice until and through new habits or ways of being take shape. What do you think? LISTEN on, LEARN, LOVE...

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STILLNESS IN DECISION MAKING

| ANNE WILLIAMSON |

You may or may not be familiar with last week's World Vision news story. To summarize: World Vision works to end poverty and injustice around the world, most visibly through child sponsorship. On Monday, March 24, World Vision (US branch) announced it would begin employing gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages. After intense criticism and dropped sponsorships from conservative evangelical Christians, on March 26, WV reversed that decision.  

Now, as a person unapologetically in favor of comprehensive equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, there are a myriad of reasons I'm anti WV's reversal; but, honestly, the biggest has to do with timing. Sources tell us WV spent 2 years in prayer and discernment around employing committed LGBTQ folks. They took just 2 days to reverse that decision! 2 years of listening amid normal daily life versus 2 days of mind-racing amid a media frenzy and disappearing contributions. If God "speaks," how does God "speak"? How do we decide to trust what it is we "hear"? LISTEN, LEARN, LOVE...  

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