I would like to lodge a complaint with the Universe – IT’S NOT FAIR! I suppose I should have waited until Lent was over. After all, we are told to believe that Lent is a time to give up things like – IDK – anger. It’s a time for repentance of things like – anger. A time to control things like, yep – anger! And I do that perfectly for at least the first thirty seconds after I wake up on Ash Wednesday.
You see, I, for one, feel a need to repeat my hurts, over and over and over, until someone, somewhere acknowledges them and apologizes. I want others to pay for their sinfulness against me and beg for forgiveness. Maybe pay for a billboard that announces to the world what a dreadful, monstrous, appalling, very bad human they are. Then, I will consider forgiving them. Maybe. But then I keep a list of offenders that I update regularly and offer to God, lest he forget.
Another aspect of clinging to our anger is the possibility that we will pass it on to our children, unwittingly. I witnessed that during the year my husband and I spent in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had the opportunity to meet a therapist who worked with kids in gangs there. The Troubles were supposed to have ended with a Peace Accord in 1994. But some people could not let go of their hatred. The teens were also divided between Protestants and Catholics, just as their parents were before. The kids who were trying to reconcile with each other were often admonished by their parents, who could never forgive.
So I sit stubbornly at the tomb, imagining that Jesus and I are members of this whiners’ club of those who have been mistreated. Not realizing the tomb is empty, Jesus is long gone, and so is everyone else who has moved on to the hallelujah and baked ham part of the Easter story.
I guess I need to reimage Lent as a time of giving up anger instead of the easier choice: chocolate, and work toward forgiveness instead of toughing it out until I can eat chocolate on day forty-one (IF I manage to wait that long), when I can celebrate my endurance with a giant Hershey bar and my ego still intact.
I know, forgiveness, YUCK! It feels unfair. We don’t want to let others off the hook. What we fail to realize is how Anne Lamott beautifully described unforgiveness: “Unforgiveness is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” Our hatred and anger cause us to suffer, while that other person probably couldn’t care one whit.
Maybe Lent isn’t about successfully avoiding anger. Maybe it’s about noticing it…and deciding to forgive anyway. Maybe it’s meant to soften the way we hold on to our hurt, to acknowledge the other’s humanity and dignity. While we may give someone a second chance to grovel at our feet, Jesus quit counting way after seventy times seven, and he wants us to do the same.
And, finally, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “maybe you’re just not that special. Maybe you are just like me and everyone else: part asshole, part angel.”
PASSION, PURPOSE & POOPYHEADS 