It happens every year. We get off to such a beautiful start in Advent, and then he shows up. This season of hope and expectation opens with the lighting of the first purple candle and a glorious reading from Isaiah. Then comes the second Sunday of Advent, and he makes his annual appearance, the man […]
Forgiveness
Ninety in Ninety
Ninety in ninety. That’s what my friend—I’ll call him Gary—had just accomplished a week earlier. Ninety AA meetings in ninety days. We sat in a coffee shop last night and I heard his story. There are a thousand ways to be a drunk, but one outcome. You can’t stop drinking even though it’s killing you […]
The Broken Pot
Many of the people who come to me with a problem or difficulty are struggling with their own imperfection, their own brokenness. We are so hard on ourselves. We can perhaps forgive others, but we cannot forgive ourselves. I know this problem from the inside. I’m a recovering perfectionist. I want things to be perfect […]
Forgiving 911 Times
On this anniversary of 9/11 the papers are full of stories about fisticuffs over the memorial at ground zero. It’s NYC and Bloomberg versus NY and Cuomo, fighting over who gets to control the memorial, who has to pay for it (it costs $60 million a year to maintain). This is about all the little […]
The Mistakes of Julia Child
“One of the secrets and pleasures of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.” -Julia Child Yesterday Julia Child turned 100. I owe her a lot. She taught millions how to cook, but […]
Deliberate Mistakes
I once worked with a stone mason who was repairing a great fireplace, with the chimney stoned all the way from the mantle to the cathedral ceiling peak. He stood back and surveyed the stone work. “What makes this artwork, what makes it beautiful is not a bunch of same-size stones all perfectly lined up […]
The Cock Crows
At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from […]
The Prerequisite of Forgiveness
A king, visiting a prison, began to interview the inmates. Prisoner after prisoner insisted that he was innocent, that he had been framed, that a terrible injustice had been done. The King then asked the last prisoner, “And are you, too, as innocent as a lamb?” “No, your majesty. I am a thief. I was […]