Forgiveness

Forgiveness has come up in my life a lot lately. The idea anyway, the heart-discussion, if not always accepted, received, offered, asked for. I recently exchanged an email dialogue with D about forgiveness. Below is the initial jumping off point.
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D,

Thanks so much for that thoughtful care package. I can’t wait to listen to the CD. I’ve never heard of Ashana, and her “angelic” voice will soon be calling my name! It’s fascinating that it’s called, “All Is Forgiven.” On my way to yoga yesterday, before I got home and got your special lil’ present to me, I ended up behind a driver with a bunch of very, very, very Christian bumper stickers all over. They said things like, “JESUS ROCKS!” and “I’M GOING TO HEAVEN….ARE YOU?” I’m purposefully exaggerating those (it’s the court jester in me), but you get the idea. Even their license plate said, “God My”, and my first (wicked and darkly humorous) thought was, “Was ‘My God’ taken, or are they dyslexic or what?” In any case, I got a kick out of them! I mention this all because in the upper right-hand corner of their back window, there was a large sticker that said, simply, FORGIVEN. And then I get home and see this beautiful card, a beautiful message, energy-filled stones, and Ashana’s CD. It’s partly the Catholic school boy in me who will stay eternal, and it’s partly just part of being human, but I think about forgiveness a lot, the concept on a macro level, and how it applies to me on a micro level – the giving and receiving of it – and how it has religious connotations in some ways and simply human connotations in other ways. In the end, I really like that that the flawed, maybe hypocritical part of me was annoyed by this driver (and I say flawed/hypocritical because I have “COEXIST” and other New Age-y bumper stickers on my car….and are they really any different?) , but then I arrive home, and here’s that word “forgiven” again, but in a context I can relate to, a safe space where I can roll that idea around with a loved one, you.

You are the second person in the last couple weeks to send me a care package that holds special stones, stones with energy and wonder and history. As I told J, they remind me of the book/film, The Neverending Story. Have you read/seen it? Both are classics to me – classics of the heart, I mean. I don’t want to give too much away in case you’ve missed out on this one (after all, you don’t know who Wilson Phillips are, you Krazy Kat!), but there’s a scene where characters hold in their hands the final fragments, the final jagged dust motes of imagination, and magic, and believing in a greater good where we are brought together by love rather than destroyed by fear and war. As I finish my novel, the four stones now hold a special place on my writing desk, and they are near the stones that M gave me, with the magic words written on them. But, to quote The Neverending Story, “that is another story for another time.”

Thanks again.

Love,

Nathan