by Lynn C. Ramshaw

Mary was in her early 40s when she was drawn so clearly into a new place with God that she noticed the change. Always aware of being known by God, she felt woefully inept in applying God’s gifts in her ordinary life. A single parent raising three children, two in their teens, working and going to school, she was impatient, harsh, fearful, and angry much more often than she was gentle, kind, patient, or controlled. Some would have said that she was admirably disciplined, noting all the things she was doing; she knew that she was barely juggling all the demands on her.

Finally, she noticed that she was venting her unacknowledged frustration on her children. In effect, she was blaming her children for her pain, and that made no sense. Seeking help, she heard, "Why don’t you accept God’s forgiveness for what you are doing, and let God help you?"

Just that one little choice, to accept God’s forgiving and compassionate love for her destructive behavior, introduced the rest of her life to her. Listen to her talk about it: "I had no idea that forgiveness worked like that. But it does. Receiving is the key; knowing that I could not do everything alone and that I was hurting my own children in the effort and then receiving God’s forgiving love deepened everything I knew about God. So many things have happened since then!"

Her life circumstances did not change, but her awareness of God’s transforming presence deepened. As time passed, she began to remember vividly brutal and tragic events in her own growing up years. Simultaneously, she also remembered always having known the comforting presence of God. She had forgotten both the brutality and the presence. The painful memories helped; Mary could see that God was steadily, intimately, and certainly with her, protecting and absorbing and healing and giving her the tools she needed to move from one day to the next. She says she began to trust God in ways she had never imagined. Literally, with her whole being, she felt that she was being held, nurtured, made one with God.

Over the years since then, many insights and experiences have confirmed her deepening connectedness with God. Some hurdles were low, easy to jump; others seemed at first impossible, then within the range of hope, then done. An insight that came to her one day was annoying: The fifth commandment to honor her father and her mother was an absolute absurdity. Whether it would separate her from God or not, she had profoundly good reason to ignore that commandment. And then, by the grace of God, she says, "I told God I was sorry for that and asked forgiveness." Just like that, an almost cosmic shift occurred within her.

Of course, her now profound repentance and God’s forgiveness could not but affect her willingness and ability to reach out with much less judgment toward others. Not perfectly, certainly, but really. Today, as she ages, she more easily forgives those who inhibit her ambitious efforts at independence; she is more gentle with those who disagree with her; she teaches vulnerability and love rather than self–protection and determination. She is, in her own words, "barely begun, yet much more a channel of love than before."

Divine conspiracy
Philosophy professor and author Dallas Willard might say that Mary is caught up in the "divine conspiracy" to overcome evil with good. He is convinced that when we live out of our relationship with Jesus Christ, relying on him, we are able to do the counter–cultural; instead of clinging to all the self–protective grudges and biases and hurts and losses, we focus our lives on Christ. We do not make a law out of loving or forgiving; loving and forgiving flow out of living in intimate relationship with Christ. We do not evaluate the good of it by "how things turn out"; we know the good of it because we are becoming the kind of people who are gifted by love and share that love. Our wrong actions are symptomatic of broken relationship with God in Christ; we cannot force ourselves back into compliance. Instead, we turn to God and discover the miraculous power to be forgiven and forgive. We are the ones changed; being loved, we become loving.

Some of our friends will find us foolish or naïve at best; it is not "in our own best interest" to leave ourselves vulnerable. But it just might be what God has in mind. We need only look to Jesus on the cross to see who God is. He hangs, naked and vulnerable, dying because we need to snuff out Love. God knows what we do not; we cannot eradicate Love, only cut ourselves off from it.

Repenting and being forgiven
Our Bible study session 6 identifies three aspects of forgiveness. As with anything else, we are incorporated into it as God invites us. Often, our experience will be something like Mary’s, where some seemingly habitual and perhaps ordinary sin has been effectively blocking all sorts of healing. We confess and glorious things happen.

Repentance, what we do, assumes forgiveness, what God does. Repentance does not make forgiveness happen; God’s grace already provides it. We just open ourselves to that grace by choosing to turn away from a destructive behavior or attitude toward God. Such turning requires trust that can be nurtured in our prayer. Some years ago, author Henri Nouwen, talking about opening up to listening prayer, to receiving God, used the word detachment:

Sometimes we do not even recognize the existence of such strong emotions as revenge and hate; we may begin with something seemingly more behavioral, as Mary did, and detach ourselves from berating our own children. As time passes, we release our excuses, biases, and grudges, all our false security and control creators, those deadly influences on who we are. We are empowered by God to replace our need to be right with our yearning to be Christ’s own. We yield. All by simply saying "forgive me" and receiving mercy.

Remembering and being re-membered
For Mary, the forgiveness effect evolved into remembering parental brutality and the truly secure presence of God. Not all memories are that dramatic. Sometimes we remember much smaller hurts; everyone has been harmed some way or another by the cruelty of others along the way. There is no need to search for these things; God reveals what we need to see. We need only be open to the recollections when they come. Have you spent time in contemplative prayer? Then you know that simple silence in the presence of God reveals long–forgotten events and images of which we are often ashamed or frightened. God does not reveal them to cause pain; God reveals them to invite re–experiencing them with God, so that we may surrender them to God. With the forgiving detachment, vengeful thinking will evaporate.

In the very moment we let go, we are re–membered, more firmly attached to the body of Christ. I think it was Christian recording artist John Michael Talbot who years ago recorded a beautiful song called "Re–member Me." All I recall now is the title and the thought: Jesus invites us to put his body back together by turning to him.

The experience of forgiveness is motivated by that vision; we yearn to be living members of Christ body; we are empowered to receive that membership in the cycle of forgiving love.

An unsettling memory or two may be the entry point for some of us into this deepening connectedness.

Reconciling and being reconciled
Former presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church Frank Griswold, who defines God’s will as "God’s affection and desire for us" in his little book Going Home: An Invitation to Jubilee (Cowley Publications, 2000), asks us a critical question: "Are we ready to discover that all of us… are one, in ways that pass all understanding… one in the power and force of God’s desire?" Is complete reconciliation with others and with God even possible?

Mary never reconciled with her parents. They had died long before she even remembered what her history with them had been. All she knew was that every experience of them was tense and unpleasant. That is a loss with which she lives. Sometimes such losses are impossible to avoid. She entrusts them to God’s care.

But sometimes, in our relationships with each other, we experience hints of the possibility of perfection. Discernment is the key. Moments when we could reach out and apologize for harm we have done or when we recognize another’s initiation of such an opportunity are precious gifts. We need to want to notice them.

Sometimes our efforts at reconciliation will be rejected; sometimes we will be tempted to reject another. We need be prayerfully present. Which means, we need desire to be drawn once again into a more complete reconciliation with God who invites all of us into the Body. Remarkably, reconciliation opportunities may be the entry point for some of us into God’s outrageous cycle of love.

Being transformed: Lent’s invitation
For Mary and for all of us, this cycle of forgiving love is both intimate and eternal. Intimate because God meets us where we are, with our particular needs for healing and our particular gifts for serving. Eternal because we, like Mary, are always imperfect in our loving, and yet one with God who is perfect. Day by day, we are being made one with God.

In this season of Lent, almost upon us, we hear Jesus’ plea to move with him toward the cross. He knows us. He knows that although such a journey is painful, we will find new life by joining in. And so, we turn our eyes toward him, listen to him, put our trust in him, give him our hearts. We will see him on that cross and hear his words for us, "Father, forgive." By his mercy we are made active members in Willard’s "divine conspiracy." We are holy. We are becoming one with God. We cannot help but reach out in God’s name, and say "Father, forgive." The joy is deep and contagious.

Lynn C. Ramshaw is a retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Chicago, a Benedictine oblate, and a retreat leader. She has three married children and seven grandchildren, with hopes for an eighth to be adopted from the Dominican Republic.