Merry Christmas!

In a particular way the birth of Jesus in the Christian Tradition begins a cycle of a life lived with forgiveness as a primary optic.  In the Gospel Canticle of Morning Prayers the author anticipates the purpose of Jesus' life, "In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."  Peace comes, as we are discovering more fully nowadays, when forgiveness is realized in our hearts and in our world.

May Christmas be a time of celebration for you and your family.  And even if you are not Christian, may these days of holiday celebration be ones where you discover afresh the gift of Forgiveness.

Holy Spirit by Hildegard of Bingen

In this Holiday Season I offer this poem of Hildegard's as a way to find the grace to forgive.


Holy Spirit,
Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful,
Awakening the heart
From its ancient sleep

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Kindness as an Aid to Forgiveness: A Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye- The Words under the words: selected poems.

Forgiveness and the Freedom of Letting Go