My reading today in A Course in Miracles tells me that I need to understand that forgiveness is not overlooking someone's sin, but rather acknowledging the fact that if God created a world as perfect as He is, nothing in that world is out of place. The reading advises me to try to understand that things that seem to need forgiving are really as they should be, and the problem I'm having with them is mine.
Jerry Fallwell died yesterday, after a long life and career in the public eye. It's hard for me to agree with anything he ever said, and I'm pretty sure that if we sat in the same room we'd have trouble agreeing about the weather. But Fallwell was part of this perfect world the Creator made, and so his actions were part of a perfect plan that I am far too limited to understand.
Sometimes I need to work on a grand scale before I can apply things I learn to my life. The part of me that wants to cheer that Fallwell won't be causing any more trouble in the world needs to be quiet. If it weren't for him, who knows where we'd be.
If nothing else, I must learn to see those who arouse animosity in me as teachers. They teach me to hold my tongue, be civil, be tolerant, not to think so much of myself and my own importance. They teach me, even if I only learn that I do not want to be like them.
Reverend Fallwell must be my teacher of tolerance. If I speak ill of him, I am intolerant. Perhaps he has taught others this same lesson as well. I do not know what secret good things the man did, and the secret things show who we really are.
"No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter Heaven by himself."
--ACIM, p. 251
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