Forgiveness as a Practice of Prayer

From Theresa Latini

Rev. Karin A. Craven is filling in for Theresa. She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and a second year PhD student in the pastoral care and practical theology program at Luther Seminary.

Earlier this week I experienced the exhaustion of grief. The loss had been a long time coming, its dimensions not unknown but repeatedly plumbed and probed, for the sake of human relationship itself, the belief in human bonds of family, and the hope of healing. The practice of discerning amidst the give and take of relationships is a common, almost unconscious task in its daily ordinariness. In extraordinary times, discernment is a task of memory and hope, weighed down by conscious expectation in the present moment of careful dialogue. Discernment in such times takes up the task of differentiating between the human task of forgiveness and God’s complete yet ongoing work of reconciliation. I ask the question, “What ought to be?” even as I listen for what I am called to do.  I remember that to be human is an eschatological identity of open awareness.

My exhaustion was one measure that treasured the depth of relationship even as it was another measure of letting go into an unknown reality. The release of sorrow and expectation of what ought to be was, at the same time, an experience of the height and depth of love that struck me to the core, that literally flattened my body (corps) into a corps(e) pose on the bed as I slept into and away from my grief.  My conscious mind fled into the sweet repose of sleep. I awakened hours later, to a new provisional containment of and embodied perspective on mourning.

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