Repentance is not Something Morbid!

By my beloved friend, Catherine

This is one of those "oh-so-true" essays that hits us where we live and helps us get real. Too many of us suffer from the idea that repentance is distasteful, shameful, miserable.

Repentance. I must admit, when I hear this word there’s something in me that almost shudders – or even better – freezes. There’s a ‘heaviness’ to it that is almost unbearable. I guess you could say, ‘repentance is heavy; it’s serious and there’s nothing light about it.’ That would be true, but I would have to explain myself a bit more for you to see where my error lies, since – as far as I can see – this ‘heaviness’ that I feel has nothing to do with real repentance at all; even worse, it’s just an imposter, a false repentance – mixing me up. I’ll explain a bit, and hopefully you’ll see through my ridiculousness.

For example, hearing that ten-letter-word my mind rushes to images of the harsh ascetic labours that such Repentant Ones did, and still do: the deprivations, the sighs, the exile and loneliness, the severe fasting, never ending prostrations, the flight from this world, and finally the terrible tortures, and horrific deaths – all due to their great repentance. Unable to identify in the least bit with such actions, such feats, I feel a crushing weight set into my bones. That’s when I’d sigh. And that’s when my mind despairs of my weakness – of my lack of love. And then the distance sets in – the utter separation. I am not good enough. With Christ having such good friends, I have no chance.

My thinking this way, it seems to me, is utter poison. I am wrong to identify these deeds – these actions – with the state of repentance.

Read the rest here.

The Black Cat

In The Story of Webster, by that incomparable humorist, P.G. Wodehouse, a young, bohemian painter inherits a black cat named Webster who sits around looking at him with such disapproval that the artist very nearly has to give up his dissolute lifestyle. Much to the alarm of his friends and fianceé, he starts shaving in the middle of the week, in fact, every morning, and wearing blue serge suits “with creases down the trouser-legs” and reading a book of etiquette. He gives up cigars and is very nearly at the point of having to give up drinking, too, being saved from this disaster only at the last moment when – well, you should read the story yourself. My point is, this young man was projecting his conscience onto Webster the cat. And that’s how we in the West tend to feel about our conscience, too. (Okay, I’m speaking for myself, but I say “we” supposing I’m not all that different from other folks.) We tend to feel as if our conscience were something dark and shadowy, always watching us. We can make it purr if we are very careful to keep doing everything as we ought. Otherwise, most of the time, the conscience is like that black cat, sitting there watching, staring, looking at us – with disapproval. Sometimes one even feels God is rather like that. He’s eyeing you with disapproval and waiting for you to do better.

But no, no, no, a thousand times no! God is neither like some black panther prowling at your elbow nor like some dread reckoning you are eventually going to have to face, but you’d rather put it off as long as possible. That is not Who God is; that is Who our sins paint Him as in our minds, with the devil’s own paintbrush. You don’t have to kick yourself first to get to God. Repentance doesn’t mean feeling rotten about yourself; it means turning to embrace what, or rather, Who, is right there beside you, waiting for you, always open to you; namely, pure Love that holds no grudge, pure Goodness, Kindness, Understanding, Joy. The Christian God, in short, is like the father of the Prodigal Son.

No, you don’t want to put off repentance, because our God is beautiful and is your freedom.

Oh, and the reckoning, and the feeling rotten about yourself? That will come, but by the time it does, you won’t mind – far from it! – because you’ll be doing your weeping from your safe haven within the arms of your all-compassionate God. You’ll weep even as Hope swaddles you with Joy, and the tears will not be bitter, but somehow, miraculously, very sweet.

Repentance

No matter how angelic we may be or have become, we still have in us something hideously amiss. We are amused when we see it in small children, offended when we see it in adults, and devastated when we discover it in ourselves, in those too-infrequent, blessed moments of self awareness.

THAT is mostly why we repent, not because of this or that we have done or failed to do, but because of the monster we see in ourselves, which we have become with our own consent, this pathetic, misshapen, never-satisfied, fire-breathing thing.

If we've never noticed the dragon within, we do not yet know ourselves. Once we do see it, we either throw in our lot with it, or declare war against it. This all-out war is what repentance is.

And once we begin to repent - an activity that will consume the rest of our lives - we shall have little time or interest to waste being annoyed because of the dragon in anybody else.

Zaccheus Cried Himself to Sleep that Night

When you begin to understand
(begin, because you never can, fully)
how hugely you have damaged and deformed yourself,
how deeply you have wounded others,

when you get a true glimpse
of the aching beauty you have missed,
the True Love you have scorned,
and trashed what is most to be cherished,

when you truly know the reality
of how ugly are the pleasures you grasp,
and how ruinous, and hateful,

and when you see, right there,
immediately next to your heart,
forgiveness, healing, a new start, real life,
all yours for the taking,

that’s when the tears come,
in a flood, all by themselves, guaranteed.