Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè
So the rumor is that the tree fell due to my disrespect for the holiness of an image representing the Holy Spirit swath of Trinity. I guess I should repent before any more trees faint away in the forest.
Dear God, please help me to be more respectful of others particularly these of this community whom I say I love as my brothers even though they are so completely ignorant of your grace. Let me not practice disdain for their pagan ways of human judgment, and their ridiculous assumption that any god punishes, even, in our times of better knowledge of the grace of the God who is truly God …Dear God, Maybe I should think through my prayer a bit more before I pray it.
My thought, here I am looking to blame the stable master for his primitive ignorance while at the same time I’m using my own prayer to ask for God to help me be respectful of others. But these brothers of mine seem to assume God would spew punishments for anothers disrespectful attitude of the Trinity. Are they completely ignorant of God’s relentless love? God who is the very nature of love is gracious, always giving freely according to our need, in fact way beyond our need, and not giving to us as reward for human good behavior. So why would that same power of love throw oak branches at a monk’s cell because his drawing of a dove didn’t meet the human standard of Trinity? And before I can pray that to God, I can see that the Holy answer is in the twist of my own words where I think I am asking God’s forgiveness for my insensitivity when really I am trying to blame another for being so ignorant. Let me give better words to my prayer.
Dear God, thank you for setting all of us in the constancy of your love. Help me always to practice that pattern, repeating it ever, even in the midst of all of our human flaws and error. May I forgive others, as you forgive me. Amen.
At first it seemed ironic that my dead so-called ‘father’ would be embarrassed by my insolence. But, as I think of it, my actual father, a Pharisee named Simon, would most definitely be embarrassed by my insolence though he surely would have no use for a three-part God especially with one part being my earthly, childhood friend Jesus.
(Continues Tuesday, September 28)
Lazarus Ink 