Thoughts on forgiveness

Brueghel paintings are marvelous. Have you seen one?

In many of them, there are a multitude of individual people portrayed as they live their daily lives, and each person has a story -- one might be slaughtering a hog and two might be gossiping next to him as children ice skate nearby and at least 50 others surround them, all participating in their own individual and varied tasks. The artist paints them all together so each person is a small detail in a landscape that makes up the fabric of village life in the 1500s. No one person or scene is the focus; the painting itself in its collective entirety is the point.

I recently read the poem "Forgiveness" by Mary McCue, which brought my attention to these paintings and helped me think about the way forgiveness can refocus our lives. In the poem, she writes, "Look long into the mirror, / be tender with the face you see, / then to the blistered past, / the entire landscape, / the smallest detail / as in a Brueghel painting, // Then revise and revise / until the story changes shape / and you, no longer the jailer, / have learned to love / what is left."

I love the thought this poem and these paintings invite me in to: when I am unwilling or unable to forgive, I make the person or situation that has wronged me the focus of the painting of my life. It is there, in the center and foreground, taking up space, seeming to be the most important subject. I begin to believe, wrongly, that this is my whole story; this is the subject that matters. I become preoccupied and lose sight of the fact the painting is so much bigger than that.

Forgiveness, however, allows me to zoom out and see this one instance or person not as the sum of my life, but as one piece of it that I am allowed to move on from, that was never meant to be the focus or totality of my life story. It is a piece of it, yes, in the background, and it helps make the entire painting more beautiful, nuanced and complete. But it is not the main point. It is not everything.

In the reflection "Washing Feet: Recipe for a servant's heart" from the book "Cultivate," David Shaver writes about John 13, when Jesus washes his disciples' feet. He points out: "He washed all their feet, including his betrayer's." Jesus' forgiveness is so complete, his vision of his own life and purpose so wide, that even in knowing the friend before him will give others access to kill him, he chooses to serve Judas in humility, compassion and love.

This is how the Lord forgives us -- he chooses to wash our feet. And in his service, he is completely free. Do we let him serve us so we can experience his deep kindness and then give it away to our own betrayers?

"Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do," Colossians 3:12-13 (NAB) says.

It can seem difficult -- or impossible -- when we think it is up to us to muster up the ability to forgive. But, as a priest once reminded me, our transformation is the Lord's work in us. All we have to do is continue to say yes to him, allowing Jesus to do whatever he wants in and with and through us. We can trust that, in his love for and service of us, it will be good, as he helps us see the grander narrative of the landscape we are painting with our lives.