The ghost of Forgiveness Vespers long past

  • Supplicating handsAttend­ing For­give­ness Ves­pers this after­noon made me think of oth­ers that I’ve done. I don’t know what num­ber I’m up to yet, but it’s enough that I always think of how dif­fer­ent they are from each other. I’ve been at some where a lot of peo­ple were in tears (includ­ing me, I think. I can’t remem­ber.). I’ve been at some where for some rea­son there was a lot of laugh­ing — we were all try­ing to be seri­ous, but funny things kept hap­pen­ing, and in the end, the some­what bub­bly mood prevailed.

    I’ve been in some where I actu­ally had some­thing to for­give. As I men­tioned back here, that’s been a rar­ity in my life, in part I think because our soci­etal ten­dency is to be polite at all costs. In church, it’s the rare per­son that makes an issue out of things. That can make church a blessed haven from the crank­i­ness and rude­ness of the out­side world, but occa­sion­ally it prob­a­bly keeps us from clear­ing the air.

    And so, we need For­give­ness Vespers.


    The time that I had some­thing to for­give, I made the rounds of the line as you do, and I’d got­ten a lit­tle mechan­i­cal. And so I didn’t notice when one per­son asked my for­give­ness with a lit­tle ten­sion in their voice. I said what I’d been say­ing with the same inflec­tion over and over: “I do for­give you.” And I would’ve moved imme­di­ately to my next line, but they went off the script. “Thank you,” the per­son said, with gen­uine feeling.

    That may have been the first time I really looked at them. I sud­denly remem­bered why they would really be ask­ing. It’s true — they had hurt me. It was done and over with, but the mark it left on me would take years to go away, and it made a lit­tle change that was per­ma­nent. I was touched that they had really been afraid that I wouldn’t for­give them It’s not like that, or maybe I just had the slight embar­rass­ment of being mis­taken for a bet­ter per­son than I was (than I am).

    How could I have not for­given them? And how could I not have needed their for­give­ness as well? Did they not know that though they hurt me one time, I had made remarks, been petu­lant, thought unjust and cruel things, not just about them, but about every­one? Wasn’t it obvi­ous what a total fake I was?

    Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but some­thing had hap­pened at work shortly before to make it obvi­ous to me. I had gone with a co-worker to an event that involved a long car trip together. Dur­ing the drive, she started blow­ing off steam about some­one we worked with. He was a funny guy, and we all loved his sense of humor, but he could also be very irri­tat­ing and very sen­si­tive. She went on about him at such length that I got caught up in it, and we ended up spend­ing the whole time in the car com­plain­ing about him and coldly ana­lyz­ing his behav­ior. It was a tire­some trip, and when I got home I felt like I needed a shower.

    But that’s not half of what I felt the next day. At lunch with the guy, he sud­denly looked at me and said with energy, “So … do you hate me or what?”

    Lost for any­thing to say, I just said, “Why would I hate you? What are you talk­ing about?” I think I already knew, but I was grasp­ing for some­thing nor­mal to say.

    “I talked to [so-and-so] last night …” Oh, yes he did. And she had talked to him. In spite of her con­stantly com­plain­ing about what a pain he was, they used to call each other all the time. And appar­ently, when he had called that night and said some­thing that annoyed her, she just started unbur­den­ing her­self of every­thing we had said in the car. No, make that every­thing I had said. It took her less than a cou­ple hours to pass along every stu­pid, ugly, point­less, idi­otic thing that I had said.

    I don’t tell this story now as some kind of self-flagellation. It’s long-gone now. The guy was quick to for­give, which might have been part of the rea­son that I was too, months later in church. But there were a cou­ple lessons that came out of it, and I thought of them again today.

    • When con­fronted about the gos­sip, I said, “I didn’t mean any of that stuff.” And it was true. I couldn’t blame him for not think­ing that was an answer. It didn’t sound like much of one. But it was the hon­est truth. All the things that seemed so per­ti­nent, so clever, so supe­rior to say under those cir­cum­stances were really just puffs of nox­ious gas, and I had known it as soon as I got out of the sit­u­a­tion that gave rise to them. I’ve never for­got­ten that when I hear some­thing that some­one has said about me. We say so many things, and there are so few of them we really mean.
    • I’m really not such a nice per­son after all. Quite a shock. I’d been say­ing I was the chief of sin­ners every Sun­day for years, but I had prob­a­bly been think­ing in the back of my mind that I was just the sort of won­der­ful per­son who would say some­thing like that. Sud­denly, I didn’t feel like a won­der­ful per­son. With the mer­est incen­tive, I had treated some­one in a way that was an offense to his human­ity, and mine.
    • Sins, remarks, hurts, unkind­nesses — they’re so often the work of an instant. Some­times you haven’t the least idea where they come from. But the effect of them lasts for years, and you can’t really take them back. The trick isn’t just to be cau­tious in your speech (though of course that’s a good prac­tice). The trick is to do the dif­fi­cult work of repent­ing, con­fess­ing, pray­ing and work­ing to do bet­ter … so that when some­thing comes straight from the heart in an unguarded moment, it doesn’t stink of petty grudges, ego­ism, judg­men­tal­ness and an ugly outlook.

    For­give­ness Ves­pers is rarely a dif­fi­cult event any more. I’ve been to too many for that. But I think there is a lot going on, if a per­son can bear to see it.

    Follow-up

    In think­ing over this inci­dent more, I real­ize that I left some­thing impor­tant off the list of what I learned from the inci­dent with my co-workers. In order of impor­tance, from least impor­tant to most impor­tant, I learned never to trust:

    1. … a gos­sip. What you tell them is bound to be broad­cast sooner or later.
    2. … the gos­sip you hear. You may actu­ally hear some things that are true, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be prof­itable. If it’s impor­tant for you to know some­thing, be assured that it will come to you by bet­ter sources than other people’s hearsay.
    3. … the impulse to gos­sip. As I’ve got­ten older, I’ve grown more aware that there’s more harm done this way than I really want to know. It seemed like good fun — and nearly harm­less — when I was younger. Now it seems like any­thing but that.
    4. … the spirit of gos­sip. Gos­sip can cast a sort of spell over a group and make them regard each other with either an unnat­ural attrac­tion or an unnat­ural dis­like. It can ruin har­mony and fel­low­ship in no time at all and lead to a com­bat­ive cli­mate where every­one feels like they have to say ter­ri­ble things about each other just out of self-defense.

    Related posts:

    1. For­give us our tres­passes more than we for­give those who tres­pass against us …
    2. For­give me
    3. On silence (again)
    4. Death and vacations
    5. Blog round-up, part two

    February 18th, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 02.18.2007

    I for­give, as God forgives.

    For­give me, my sister.

  • Grace

    God for­gives. I for­give also.

  • s-p

    sigh…Thanks, Grace. It sucks being a human being some­times. Thank God there is such a thing as gen­uine forgiveness.

  • Michelle

    This year I par­tic­i­pated in my first for­give­ness ves­pers. It was such a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. I really look­ing for­ward to next year’s,

  • Grace

    Michelle:
    Hey, con­grat­u­la­tions! Well, I guess “con­grat­u­la­tions” isn’t the right expres­sion, is it? But any­way, I’m glad you found it mean­ing­ful. It’s hard for some peo­ple, but I don’t see how we could start Lent with­out it. I had to miss the ser­vice one year, and I missed it for the whole season.

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