Several times in these pages I have mentioned that I often begin my Saturdays with a trip to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market. In the beginning I was single minded. I focused on taking in the incredible artistic beauty of colorful produce lined up on tables and flowing out of the backs of trucks. I walked the three aisles taking everything in and then doubled back to buy whatever might grace our table during the upcoming week. I was in and out of there in thirty minutes or so and heading on to whatever else Saturday might hold.

But at some point of this summer I changed my pattern. I love to arrive early and have the first cup of coffee surrounded by farmers and vendors unpacking their wares. It is wonderful to watch them greet one another as they set up. It makes me long to be one of them, sharing the camaraderie of early mornings filled with loading and lifting, the goodness of things fresh from the earth. It is also interesting to see the ‘regulars’, those who show up at about the same time, usually pulling an oversized grocery bag on wheels. They also greet both sellers and buyers in a way that is reminiscent of the town squares of days gone by. Something about the experience unlocks a place of hope in me.

Last week while sitting watching this simple, yet profound drama of this slice of life unfold, I became aware of two little children who were probably about four years old. They were both wearing Minnesota Twins t-shirts and had that wonderful dazed and rumpled look that little children have in the early morning. Their mother was busy looking at first the salsa and then the hummus of the vendors straight ahead of the bench on which I had taken up residence. Their faces were sweet. The girl was a few inches taller than the boy. I watched their large eyes taking in the scene around them. The girl listened to the conversation her mother was having with the salsa guy. She looked a bit skeptical. I wondered what was going on in her mind.

Then my eyes fell to their hands. Every now and then the boy would reach out and touch the hand of his sister. Their fingers would flutter together, never fulling grasping a hold on the hand of the other. Their heads turned looking in opposite directions and yet fingers still reached for the other as if reaching out for the assurance that the other was not too far away. That was when I realized they were twins.

I watched them as their mother moved down the aisle of tables. As children often do, they observed what was going on around them with eyes that seemed to see a deeper understanding of the movement of the world around them. But they never lost the touch of fingers on fingers which seemed to ground them in a reality that had probably accompanied them in the womb. Their fingers seemed to be saying, “I am not alone. I feel you right beside me.”

Whether we shared the water home we all emerged from with another or not, aren’t these the words we assure ourselves with over and over? In the dark of the night. In the glare of a hospital waiting room. On the first day of kindergarten, of high school, of college, of a new job. As we move about our daily lives in all its mundane and exquisite moments. Don’t we all wish we could reach out and feel the soft, reassuring fingers of someone reassuring us that we are not alone?

The twins in their Twin’s shirts moved on into their day following in their mother’s shadow. I finished the last sips of my coffee and prepared to walk among the beauty and splendor of flowers and vegetables so rich with color they took my breath away. As I walked among the ever growing crowd, I kept my hands to myself. But I quietly whispered a blessing: ” You are not alone. I am right beside you.”

My fingers were itching in my pockets.

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
~Matthew 6:12

Yesterday I was listening to the voicemails recorded on my office phone. I was jotting down the names and numbers of those who had questions and requests for return calls when one caller made what was to me the most astounding statement. ” I am an expert in forgiveness.” she said. I replayed the message three times just so I could hear someone, anyone, make such a claim.

Hanging up, I was consumed by desire. I want to be able to say that! I want to be able to say to myself and others that I am an expert in the fragile and courageous act of forgiveness. Unfortunately pure desire cannot make such a profound thing come true. While I may want to be a forgiving person, someone who can open my heart with humility to all I meet, I so often find myself digging a hole deep in the pit of my stomach and planting it full of resentments and judgments and just plain meanness. I am not proud of this but I know it is true.

How does forgiveness move in your life? Where does it find a home in you? How are you able to offer it to those you love, those with whom you struggle, those who drive you right up a wall? Reflecting on these questions, it is clear to me how difficult and yet imperative a life of forgiveness really is. It is one of the acts that keeps us moving forward in our spiritual lives,in the pursuit of happiness and in a quest for the common good.

What might it look like to be an expert in forgiveness? I think a recipe might include a heart of compassion and a huge helping of humility. Added to that might be gentleness with both myself and the people I live with, work with, travel life’s road with. This would probably be driven by an understanding that, as a general rule, we are all doing the best we can in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. This thought, in and of itself, should be enough to keep our hearts soft toward one another. Even when it seems someone has wronged us or done something to make us angry, the idea that they are really doing the best they can, should give us the opportunity to take a breath and choose our words wisely. Words that will eventually lead us to a place of forgiveness.

No doubt,becoming an expert in forgiveness, like most everything else, takes practice. When we choose to make a practice of forgiveness, I would imagine each new opportunity to offer this sacred act comes a little easier. I would also imagine that if we give ourselves to the practice, our capacity for forgiveness increases with each precious day.

In the prayer Jesus offered his followers, he placed the act of forgiveness right smack in the middle of these words many of us offer with great regularity. It is clear from those words that the ability to forgive is a two way street…….as the Holy offers forgiveness to us, so we are to offer forgiveness to others.

Becoming an expert in forgiveness is a call held out to us by the One who breathed us into being. It is sealed in the words of this common prayer held out in the outstretched hands on the person who tried in every encounter to embody God. My hope is that I might someday be able to make the claim I heard on my voicemail. It will, I’m sure, take a lifetime.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly……” 1 Corinthians 13:12

For several months now I have been wrestling with an idea, a concept, a thought about what I have come to call wisdom. It is a wisdom that evolves, is not set in stone, grows with one’s experience and understanding. I know that this wrestling finds its source in the seemingly on-going dissension that seems to be everywhere in our culture. Government. Churches. Schools. Cities. Neighborhoods. Between so many individuals. It seems that, someplace along the continuum of the time in which we are living, in an effort to live together as people who are floating on one amazing planet, there has come a place in which we have little or no ability to work in civil ways with one another. I have tried to figure out when the fabric began to unravel.

This predicament has led me to think on the wisdom that comes from sticking with a person or a situation long enough to change and be changed. Take parenting for instance. Before I became a parent I had a list a mile long of things ‘ I was not going to do. ‘, things my children were ‘never going to have.’ Once I was in the trenches of being a parent and I was in moment by moment connection with these living, breathing, unique beings, I came to see these non-negotiables in a very different way. I learned that some of the things that seemed so very important to me pre-children were quite immaterial in the bigger picture of helping a child find their way in the world.

I recall how,as I approached my freshman year of college, I had ideas and goals that were quite well defined. I had a plan for exactly where I was going and how I was going to get there. But as the days and years flowed out, the experiences I had, the people I met, the successes and failures which I experienced, all contributed to the changes I made in the plan I had so carefully constructed. Some of these experiences were difficult and painful. Some wrenched at values I had held as sacred. But if I had not been open to those forces which provided a certain dose of wisdom, I would not be in the place I am today, doing the work I love so much.

This work I love so much has also provided spoonfuls of humility. Coming into the work of the church in my early adult years, I was so full of what was ‘right’ and what was ‘wrong’. I was so often ready to stand my ground on a particular issue, theological or otherwise, only to have my heart softened and my behavior gently chastised by a word or a tear offered by a mentor who was walking a very tenuous path. I have learned that even in the world of faith, or perhaps particularly in the world of faith, there are no black and white answers. There is much gray and the more we experience of it, the more wisdom comes our way.

Many of our elected leaders have come to office while riding a chariot of promises that are unkeepable. These sound bites that were part truth and part marketing can be dangerous to try to uphold. Over the last weeks I have often thought of the late Senator Paul Wellstone who was criticized for changing his mind on a few of the issues he had campaigned on. I remember what a breath of fresh air it was to me when he made a comment that he didn’t have all the knowledge or information he had gained once he was on the ‘inside’. It was only right to change his mind once he moved from being a freshman to being a senior.

It is the hope of every individual to grow in wisdom, I believe. Wisdom does not come without its fair share of mistakes, embarrassments, and recognitions that we are not as smart as we thought we were. I think of Moses as he began his journey with the people of Israel. He was as green as leaders come. But over the years he led this grumbling, thankless lot through plagues and parted seas. He grew in wisdom and applied each failed attempt to build these people into a nation to his next effort. It wasn’t easy or pretty. And, in the end, he didn’t even get to cross over to the Promised Land.

My prayer this day is for wisdom that continues to evolve, day by precious day.