I suppose I’m a church geek. Maybe it comes from having written liturgy, designing a worship service, or being in a church choir. I’ll often browse the hymnal looking at inclusive language (not exclusively male pronouns for God), or hymns that I haven’t met before. Way in the back of the book where the indices are is my go-to spot. There’s the song titles, tune titles, first lines, metrical indices. The New Century Hymnal that my home church uses has an index by the revised common lectionary, a three year pattern of scripture readings for every Sunday and hymns that are thematically connected.
I was at a memorial mass for a former colleague from work earlier this week, and there’s a part in the mass where non-Catholics have time to look around. I pulled the hymnal out and started to browse the topical index. You might remember that I’m going to preach a sermon in March on the topic of forgiveness. So I was looking for a hymn or two about forgiveness. First pass through the ‘F’s’ and I couldn’t find forgiveness. Second pass through and I couldn’t find it. I was looking for a larger section, as forgiveness is rather a large part of Christianity. But there it was: Forgiveness — see Mercy, Reconciliation.
That’s been playing in my head this week ever since. Forgiveness — see Mercy.
Oh, I did find find a new tune: A Taizé song called God is Forgiveness.
But Forgiveness — see Mercy, that was a priceless find.
Feather in the Wilderness 
So many of these are harsher than your intention with this, but I wanted to share this woman’s awesome hand-embroidery : https://www.instagram.com/p/Brk-ykuF1vn/ and https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsqe5W1BVph/
She’s approaching the concept from a different perspective, one of systematic oppression/repression of women and the harm she’s experienced in a patriarchal society. I think my favorite one, though, is https://www.instagram.com/p/BsvyoKWlBZS/ – sometimes forgiveness isn’t something that is necessary or appropriate.
The trope of “forgive and forget” also seems like an interesting one to address. They’re two totally separate processes, and sometimes one is better in a situation than another. But ask nearly any English-speaker about forgiveness, and it’s highly likely they’ll be thinking of “forgive and forget.” Maybe we should remove that phrase altogether from our vocabularies?
LikeLike
Absolutely, Mari, forgive and forget is something you’ll never hear from me. Remember, so that you’ll not do that again, or let it happen to you. I can cognitively understand that forgiving is helpful if you’ve been offended, but sometime pulling out that shard of glass can cause more pain. Forgiveness is my growing edge.
LikeLike