Week 5

Thoughts from Class

This week our assigned reading for class was The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond and Mpho Tutu. The book is laid out in three parts, where the authors first write to help the readers understand forgiveness, then outline the fourfold path, and conclude that “all can be forgiven.” Each chapter ends with a series of practices that the reader is invited into: meditation, a stone ritual, prayer, and journaling.

To be honest, as someone who has experienced trauma and continues to work on what forgiveness means for myself, I wasn’t sure how ready I was to engage with this text. However, I reminded myself of a common mantra, “Take what you need and leave the rest.” I know that I can always come back to the book and put in more work, because the work is never done, at a time where I’m perhaps feeling more ready. That said, there are some quotes from the book I want to share because they really stood out.

This is something I work to remind myself of on a daily basis. We are all broken, we have all experienced loss and trauma, even if it looks drastically different from person to person. Our job is not to minimize the pain and brokenness in other people but to see it and understand that from that pain, we cause pain.

Response to Scripture

The scriptures for this week were: Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-7; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10.

Resources

(1) A song or hymn connected (2) a media piece - art, film, music, cartoon, meme, blog post, etc. (3) an action someone could take - prayer, legislative action, meditation, petition to sign etc. Each resource is related or connected either the lectionary text or the focus area of expansive language.

Song/Hymn

While not directly connected to either my focus topic or the scripture for the week, as I was reading about forgiveness I couldn’t help but sing this song. “Your forgiveness Is like sweet, sweet honey On my lips Like the sound of a symphony To my ears Like Holy water on my skin.”

Pop Culture Reference or Media Piece

This week I want to share a clip from one of my favorite tv shows, Schitt’s Creek. While I recognize that the dialogue in this clip is not remotely about God or the divine, and instead about sexuality, I think the creators did a fantastic job talking about pansexuality in such a short clip. And I think that David’s response and Stevie’s openness are great examples of how we can engage in conversations about preferences - like the language we use for God! After all, as David says, “I like the wine and not the label.” It is my hope that everyone who desires a relationship with God is able to find that, using whatever label is best for them.

Action - Pray

This is a Womanist adaptation of the Lord’s Prayer by Reverend Yolanda Norton.