Forgiveness

I've been a little pulled back these days.  I don't like the word silent, because that doesn't quite hit the meaning.  I'm not struggling with depression tugging at me, but perhaps I have been lost in my own thoughts a bit.

Some of this has been triggered by a book I read.  Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber.  It is a slim little thing, an "easy" read, but not really.  For any of you who were raised in a religious household as a child and saw the hypocrisy of either your church or the people who claim faith, this is a good one.

I remember when I was very young, not understanding why people hated Judas.  Why was this man, who was supposedly furthering along the very thing that needed to happen, why was he burning?  Didn't god need him to do this? Wasn't he also sacrificing?  I remember in Catechism being the kid who frustrated the shit out of the middle aged ladies that were tasked with prepping us for whatever useless role the church had ready for us. And I am pretty sure the youth pastor and the priest didn't like me much either.  I finally did what was expected and shut my mouth and spit out the rote crap churches love so much.

Yeah...got me confirmed.... whatever the hell that ever really meant, no one could clearly explain either....anyway I digress....

Back to Judas.

Back to this book.  She speaks of Judas...but in a way that I have never heard.  Judas, just like Peter, did something that later....they regretted...(I know I am simplifying here). Peter...asked for forgiveness....Judas' mistake wasn't really that he betrayed Jesus it was that he failed to ask for forgiveness.

That was the point of "the Christ", right? Forgiveness.....

He would have been forgiven, if he only asked.

That is the point of the Judas story. Not how we are punished for our mistakes, our faults, our transgressions. Not that we have to always behave in a certain way, or conform to a way of life...we are to learn from Judas that forgiveness is always ours...if we only ask. 

Nadia Bolz-Webber also proposes this idea (as I understand it) that this is the gift, that the forgiveness we seek resides in one another. It is not outside of ourselves...we create "church" or community and it is that connection we turn to.  The divine in one another, the "Christ" if you will, is where the gift resides.

This is making me look hard at me....at the lingering anger I have about events in my past. Both years past and more recent.  Why can't I let go? Why am I letting myself burn so to speak? 

Ah.

Forgiveness.....have I asked for it? Have I given it?

So I asked.  I told someone things I have not shared with anyone.  I asked if I could be forgiven.  Then I thought about some of the things I dealt with in the last 10 years, the violation, the violence. 

I choose to forgive.

Apologies are not necessarily needed, I mean I know I will never ever receive one, yet I can forgive....so...I can be forgiven as well.  We can use the story of Judas as a way to learn, not terrify...We need only ask.  I know there maybe some one who reads this who will come at me for this reading of the story.  That's fine.  I am no biblical scholar...But I know from a young age I felt this sense of frustration about the sacrifice that needed to happen, yet everyone vilified the man who pushed it forward.  I prefer this interpretation of the story of Judas and Peter.  Judas only needed to ask...we all need to just ask.

Anyhoo.....this is where my mind has been for a while....I will get back to writing about workouts and I will get back to posting silly things at some point, like this guy:

but right now....this is where I am.

Thanks.