Now, it is not that I am ignoring sin, or that I think any one of us is sinless. It is only as I know myself a sinner that I can experience God’s forgiveness. But God does not dwell on our sins any more than I, as a human parent, dwelt on my children’s wrongdoing. When we sin, and we all do, then we turn to our loving Father for forgiveness, and as long as our repentance is sincere, forgiveness is never withheld.
Part of my bedtime routine when I was a child was to say my prayers with my parents and then confess any wrong I had done during the day. Sometimes I made my parents sad, and myself, too, but my confessions were always followed by immediate forgiveness, by assurances of love, the love of my parents, the love of God. I am grateful for the teaching given me by my Episcopalian parents, because it grounded me in an awareness of God’s all-embracing love.
The God of wrath and vindictiveness is not a new image. It was one of the early heresies, proposed by Marcion, and known as Marcionism: for these heretics the Maker of the Universe is not a good Maker, but a kind of Saddam Hussein, if you will, and Jesus had to come to save us from this vindictive Maker. The early Christian creeds, the Apostles’, the Nicene, the Athanasian, were not written because anybody wanted to write creeds or statements of faith, but to combat the heresies that sprang up early in Christendom; many of the heresies sprang from a fear that because this is a wicked world, perhaps God was not good after all. The other prevalent heresy, and it is still around, came from an inability to comprehend that Jesus was wholly human and wholly God—for that, of course, is the extraordinary marvel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for love of us he was both human and divine. Probably that statement of faith which I could not sign because it was not scriptural was written a hundred or so years ago to combat some current heresy. We no longer know what that heresy was and are left, instead, with the Marcionite heresy. I am not happy with most creeds or statements of faith. I am more comfortable with The Westminster Confession, which tells us that our duty is to love God and enjoy him forever. Forever. Now, and into eternity.
My friend the theologian said that if we die, and Jesus looks at us with love and we respond to that look with love, then we are in heaven. But if Jesus looks at us with love and we respond with fear or hate or anger, then we are in hell. It is the same look, but it is we who make it heaven or hell. Surely we begin to make our own heaven or hell in our daily lives, with our responses of love or fear or anger.
Now, it is not that we are never to be afraid or never to be angry. Jesus was afraid. In the garden his sweat was like drops of blood as he begged that the cup might be taken from him. And there were a number of times when he was angry. He threw the money lenders out of the temple. He was angry with those who were judgmental and hard of heart. But he did not stay in fear or anger. He always turned to his loving Abba, Papa, Daddy. “Not my will,” he said in the garden, “not my will, but yours.” When he was called “good” he replied that there was only One who was good, the loving Father in heaven.
When I came home from the hospital in San Diego—my son and daughter-in-law once again flew out from Connecticut, this time to bring me to Crosswicks—I was still very ill and weak. Hospitals are no longer good places for sick people once they’re off the machines; a hotel in San Diego was not really an alternative, and I could not abuse Deborah’s hospitality by staying overlong in her lovely home. And I was eager to get home, even knowing that I was really not strong enough for the chaos of the airport and the long flight. The only direct flight was at seven in the morning, and of course we had to be at the airport well before that. Marilyn was staunchly with me, and we met Bion and Laurie, and Sally, there.
It was not an easy flight. We had treated ourselves to first-class seats, but when we boarded the American Airlines plane the seats that were euphemistically called first-class were, at best, business size. When I tried to take a nap, I was so strictured by the narrowness of the seats that my arms fell asleep.
When we landed in New York, the wheelchair we had ordered for me did not come, despite the fact that we had reconfirmed it when we boarded the plane. Nearly an hour later, when a wheelchair was found, it had no foot section, and I was pushed along with my legs sticking out in front of me, by someone who got lost in his own airport, so that by the time we got to the car my calves were sore from holding up my legs.
Nevertheless I was overjoyed to get home, and the pesto Bion had made for dinner almost tasted like real food. Getting up the stairs was an exhausting feat. Indeed, I was so tired that I was in that strange place on the other side of fatigue. All the primitive fears were still with me; I was like a small child fearful of the dark at the head of the stairs.
I spent the first day, still exhausted from travel, listening to the radio as Hurricane Bob and the coup in Russia vied for first place on the radio and TV. The hurricane raged up the coast and attacked Connecticut where I was lying in bed, weak, and in pain. I wasn’t even in my own bed (a big four-poster which I wasn’t strong enough to climb in and out of, so I was in the guest room). Trees were crashing under the lashing of the wind, and power was going out all over the state. And I was afraid of the dark, not a normal fear, but a fear brought about by severe physical trauma. And I prayed, “Oh, God, I know it’s selfish, but please don’t let the power go out.”
Our part of Connecticut, the northwest corner, was hit only by the outer edge of the storm and was the only part of Connecticut where the power stayed on. During the wakeful hours of the night I was comforted by the small, steady glow of the night-light. Now that I am regaining my strength those primitive fears are retreating, but they were there.
So, yes, there are times when we are afraid, because we are human beings. So I was afraid. And there have been times when I have been angry, usually when somebody I love does something I know is unworthy, is less than that person should be. But I cannot stay in anger, and that is a God-given grace. I cannot go to bed without trying to reconcile with whoever it is with whom I am out of sorts.
We are not meant to be plaster saints who are never frightened or angry. These are human emotions and few people can avoid them. However, we are not meant to be stuck in them, but to turn to God and move on. When I am angry with someone, I know, to my rue, that there have been many times when I, too, have been less than I ought to be, when I have not honored God’s image within me. This understanding alone should be enough to keep us from hanging on to grudges!
* * *
—
I lay in the guest room bed listening to the wind and rain, and I called on God for mercy, and God was indeed merciful. But I knew then and know now that I am human and finite, and God is divine and infinite. Because God is a God of love, that love is revealed to us in Christ Jesus. And that should be enough for us, but over and over again we make God in our own image, see God anthropomorphically, and that is where some of the images of the angry God have come from, the punitive God who refused to speak to Saul because he had not slaughtered all of the Amalekites. Montaigne said, “O senseless man, who cannot make a worm, and yet makes gods by dozens.”
Luci told me of her great-great-grandfather, a highly respected physician, who had twenty-two children. Every morning for breakfast he had a three-minute boiled egg, and every morning he carefully cut off the top of the egg and handed it to his wife. That was her share, the small cap of eggshell filled with a little albumen. At least she didn’t have to worry about cholesterol. But such autocrats often become the image we carry of God. Here is a poem by Luci Shaw which holds much wisdom:
Eating the Egg Whole
One of my forbears, a vigorous progenitor,
nameless but real by virtue of family
history’s sharp details, went through
three wives. One story is that every day
he breakfasted with the current spouse
on toast and a three-minute egg,
chipping off its white cap in the precise
British way, and in a grand gesture,
spooning to his wife that minor albumen,
watery, pale as her self. That was her meal;
he feasted on yolk, rich and yellow
as a gold sovereign, and crushed the shells,
feeding them by gritty doses to
his offspring, lined up along the table—
a supplement to stave off rickets and
accustom the family to patriarchy.
* * *
Nourished thus on remnants and rigor,
his tribe multiplied to twenty-two.
The legend astonishes me still. Those
women…! And I still bear, along with traces
of their genes, a vestigial guilt
whenever I cook myself a breakfast egg
and then devour it, white, yolk,
protein, cholesterol, and all. Like
seeing the sun after generations of moons.
Like being the golden egg and eating it too.
In the twenty-third chapter of Numbers when Balak is trying to persuade Balaam to curse the Jews, Balaam uttered his oracle and said, “God is not a man.” No, God is not a man like one of us, but the Lord of heaven and earth, of this small planet and of all the galaxies, which we too easily forget, with our human need to decide what God is like, and who God’s prophets should be. And we feel intense discomfort, if not fear and anger, when the people God speaks through aren’t the ones we expect. Hannah gave Samuel to God to make into a prophet, but when the people wanted a king they did not listen to Samuel or God. And this was nothing new. In the eleventh chapter of Numbers we read,
Two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp….The Spirit also rested on them….A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” Joshua son of Nun…said, “Moses, my lord, stop them!”
They weren’t the expected prophets, the right prophets, the correct prophets. But clear-sighted Moses replied, “I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”
And in Mark’s Gospel we read something similar: John said to Jesus,
“Teacher…we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.”
Unless we are very secure in God’s love this is not easy, this listening to prophets we don’t expect. But all through Scripture prophets have not had a comfortable time of it. They told the truth, and the truth is often hard to hear, because we’re afraid of that truth which Jesus promised would make us free. So, for telling the truth, the prophets have been stoned, put in prison, discredited.
And how do we know who are God’s prophets and who are fakes? Or, even worse, who are followers of the imitator? The Lord of the Flies? It is not always easy or even possible to tell, because God is no respecter of persons and often chooses people to prophecy who seem not only unqualified, but who tell us so many things we don’t want to hear that we tend to close our ears.
* * *
—
In a letter I received not long after my return to Crosswicks, I was asked if I had forgiven the truck driver who had caused my accident. This was an unexpected thought for me. My focus was on recovering, returning to life. Come to think of it, I do not feel particularly kindly towards that truck driver who, as far as we know, still has never inquired if he hurt or killed the people in the little car he demolished. But I am happy to leave him to God. If there are lessons he needs to learn from this experience, well, he is God’s child, not mine, and it is up to God, not me, to teach him.
Do I forgive him? It hadn’t really even entered my thoughts. This man, whom I never saw, has not been in my mind. I don’t know his name. I never saw his face. I have not been thinking about him, and that’s probably just as well. Over to you, God.
What has been in my mind, once my mind was able to be released from enduring pain, was the wonderful love and concern of family and friends, a beautiful network of prayer which sustained me. The love which came to me from all over the country far outweighed the carelessness and irresponsibility of one truck driver.
Who were the prophets for me during this experience? Those who cared, doctors, nurses, friends, those who prayed. If we sometimes entertain angels unaware, we are sometimes upheld by prophets of whom, at the moment, we are also unaware. My prophets expected me to fight to live, to regain health, to look for meaning in what could easily seem meaningless. There is a horrible irrationality about life suddenly being cut in two on a sunny Sunday afternoon in San Diego and, while we understand with our minds that much of life is irrational, when it hits us we are startled and confused. There’s much about this accident I don’t understand yet, but little bits of meaning, little bits of God’s amazing love are revealed daily.
And ultimately forgiveness is a gift of grace rather than an act of will. I have to be willing to forgive, but I cannot will myself to forgive. I can forgive with my mind, but forgiveness is finally a matter of the heart. And the forgiveness of the heart comes from God, not from me. My part in it is to be willing to accept it. One test which indicates whether or not forgiveness has really taken place is to look at whatever it is that needs to be forgiven and see if it still hurts. If it does, forgiveness has not yet happened. But I have also learned, and I have learned it through pain, that I must be patient with myself. Just as my body is going to need more time to complete its healing from the physical trauma of the accident, so my heart, my spirit, also need time, and I, ever impatient, must be patient with myself.
I have understood as far back as I can remember that the mind has an enormous effect on the body; we human creatures are a whole, and what affects any part of us affects the whole of us. And how our bodies respond to suggestion! If someone looks at me with concern, asking, “Are you all right? You look really terrible. Are you running a fever?” I’ll immediately begin to feel miserable. But if that same person says to me instead, “Madeleine, you look wonderful. I’ve never seen you looking better,” I’ll feel wonderful. I have understood clearly the effect of the mind on the body, but I’ve only begun to understand the effect of the body on the mind.
It has long been my practice to read Morning and Evening Prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, with both Old and New Testament lessons. As I shared earlier, for a while after the accident I was too weak to hold either my small travel Bible or my prayer book. But even after enough strength had returned so that I could write in my journal and read a little, I did not turn back to the deeply ingrained habit of Morning and Evening Prayer, and something (Someone? The Holy Spirit?) told me to be patient with myself. I knew that the time would come when this sustaining routine would be re-established. And it was. When I could eat again, I could read morning and evening prayer again. God’s timing is more realistic than our own, or at least than my own. I am back with the wonderful words of prayer and Scripture, and food tastes good! So I am beginning to understand the effect of the body on the mind and spirit.
When it is time for me to face either anger or forgiveness, then I believe I will be given the courage to do so.
However, when I remember the moment of the accident suddenly shattering a peaceful Sunday afternoon, all I feel, still, is surprise. It’s almost harder to be alive now than it would have been to die. After all, I had lived a full and wonderful life. I had passed the biblical three score years and ten. Why am I still alive?
If I still have much to learn, perhaps my efforts at learning will be useful to other people whose lives are also filled with unexpected and often terrifying surprises. And the old question rears its ugly head: if God is good, why is there so much pain? Theologians have been trying to ans
wer this question for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and thus far it remains unanswered. The closest we get to understanding is a kind of subdued gratitude that God created us human beings with a modicum of free will. We are not puppets being manipulated by a master puppeteer. We do have some say in our own story, and often we tell the story in uncomprehending and sometimes evil ways, and innocent people suffer because of the wrongdoing of others. But whatever our experience is, God is there, in it with us, as God was in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That isn’t really an answer, but it’s all we’re going to get, and it’s enough. Even when we are too lost in pain, physical or spiritual, to experience knowingly the presence of God, God is still there.
That is what the prophets have told us throughout the ages. God is still with us even when we are not with God, even when we have turned to alien gods, pride, greed, lust, God is still with us in the midst of our troubles.
Some of our prophets at this end of a troubled century have themselves been troubled. We’ve had televangelists who’ve been tripped by the lusts which are rampant across our land and who have thereby discredited much of what they’ve had to say, which is a terrible tragedy, because much of what they had to say is good, and their behavior does not negate the good. We’ve had denominations spending years to formulate statements about sex, as though suddenly, at the end of the twentieth century, we could unravel what has been a tangle since Adam and Eve. We’ve had those who think they can make the definitive statement about homosexuality, or abortion, or life after death. But that’s not what true prophets do. True prophets point out problems, rather than offering easy solutions. They tell us that actions have consequences, that if we fall into sexual or any other kind of self-indulgence we will find that the price can be intolerably high.
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