I grew up in a religious community that preached forgiveness of sin, that awful impediment to right relationship with the divine. One sought salvation or, more exactly, reconciliation with God and sought baptism as a symbol of the washing away of sin. Our church taught that baptism was not magically cleansing but symbolically so. Magic and miracles belonged to the pre-Enlightenment past. The religion was modern, rational, and even democratic. Still, the religious life and congregational experience were not without feeling. As members tried to live what was often called the Christian life some folk felt forgiveness, others did not.
Forgiveness was tied in with a moral insistence that if we were to be forgiven, we must be forgiving. For me, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to capture the relationship. It ends with these words:
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
To my way of thinking, that sixth line could easily and logically read, “It is in forgiving that we are forgiven.” The religious and moral sentiment was: if we wanted “in” we had to invite others in, if we wanted love we had to love, if we wanted hope we had to offer hope to others.
When I was around twenty-five I talked on the phone to a woman who could not forgive herself for an abortion she had sought years before. From my naïve and inexperienced perspective I suggested that God had already forgiven her. I guess I was kind of pep talking her into a theological affirmation that somehow didn’t address the forgiveness issues in her life. In the ensuing years I replayed that conversation and eventually heard in her voice evidence that she was drunk. (As I said, I was naïve.) I suspect that she probably called a different church every time she took up the bottle. There was something in her behavior that harkened back to experiences, teachings, accusations, probably preaching, and perhaps emotional instability. The only thing I could say about my end of the conversation is that I was open, positive, caring, and long-suffering. Eventually I came to understand how difficult forgiveness could be for some folk, especially in being able to forgive themselves or, in a religious sense, to accept that God has forgiven them. My twenties-something world was so simple. I was not plagued with guilt feelings; I was preoccupied with the challenges of career and family-building, enjoying life in a city church where I wasn’t expected to pray for rain. (I had left small churches in farm towns.)
Over the years of ministerial practice I learned to be more compassionate to and tolerant of other people whose beliefs sometimes seemed pathetic to me. I learned to listen with greater complication and to move myself into work most appropriate to my gifts. I felt good in my ministry. Still I knew more and more that I was living in a strange and probably unhealthy environment. My homosexual proclivity placed me in a precarious position, especially as the conservative powers of the 1980s and 90s focused more and more on a concept of otherness, opposed the gay and lesbian search for freedom as legalizing the unpardonable sin. I knew better. I knew the great humanity of homosexual love, its enriching effects in my own life. I valued my homosexuality as well as my heterosexuality and realized that for this to become generally known would relegate me to outer darkness in the view of many parishioners and even many of my colleagues. They would see me as sinful—you know: he desires the wrong sex and he is not monogamous—sins that even if tolerated in distant relatives certainly could not be countenanced in clergy. Quite often I had to forgive people their ignorance and hate while promoting a strategy and spirit of tolerance, service, and love.
At the family core of my life I knew that whatever happened between my wife and me would be forgiven. I already knew that and trusted the two of us to weather the storms of our relationship. It has been so. She forgave; I forgave. She forgave my needs and the pain I brought to her; I forgave her chosen unawareness and temporary anger. We forgave but still separated, and at age 50 I did not want to spend any time trying to represent my complicated self to the churches of my denomination. I chose to continue my St. Francis perspective and prayer outside that organization although I remain connected with my family and some long-time friends. I presume their forgiveness just as I do the forgiveness of the profligately loving God. And I live in open acceptance of others even when they are not particularly open to me.
Denver, © March 9, 2015
About the Author
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
