Dear Friends,

Thanks so very much for your words of affirmation and congratulations to Ron (and some to me...Jean!!) in acknowledgment of Ron’s selection as the recipient of the Boston Theological Institute’s 2013 Humanitarian Award. Since we often co-author these letters, we realize that ‘who’s who in the writing’ can be confusing. We apologize for any confusion, but again thank you so very much for your amazing response. It has added exponentially to our joy as we experienced your presence ‘with us’ in this time of celebration.

This Sunday’s gospel is the story of the Prodigal Son....or to be p.c. about it, the Prodigal One. Last year when we read this gospel story, we had a very engaging dialogue homily on what the different responses might have been had the “prodigal one” been a daughter rather than a son...and/or if the parent had been a mother rather than a father! We’ll leave you to ‘ponder’ those questions anew, and instead turn the focus of this reflection onto the struggle we all face in coming to a place of self-forgiveness. Our thoughts are prompted by the prayer/poem penned by Alden Solovy, a Jewish poet and liturgist:

Repentance Inside

This I confess to myself:
I have taken my transgressions with me,
Carrying them year-by-year into my hours and days,
My lapses of conscience
And indiscretion with words,
My petty judgments
And my vanity,
Clinging to grief and fear, anger and shame,
Clinging to excuses and to old habits.
I’ve felt the light of heaven,
Signs and wonders in my own life,
And still will not surrender to holiness and light.

God of redemption,
With Your loving and guiding hand
Repentance in prayer is easy.
Repentance inside,
Leaving my faults and offenses behind,
Is a struggle.
In Your wisdom You have given me this choice:
To live today as I lived yesterday,
Or to set my life free to love You,
To love Your people,
And to love myself.

God of Forgiveness, help me to leave my transgressions behind,
To hear Your voice,
To accept Your guidance,
And to see the miracles in each new day.

Blessed are You,
God of Justice and Mercy,
You set Your people on the road to t’shuva.

© 2013 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

How often have we said or heard others say: “it’s hardest to forgive ourselves”? How many spirits have been swamped under the weight of self-condemnation? What prompts us to “take our transgressions with us...carrying them from year to year”? Sometimes, it may be that in fact we continue the very same offenses, but often what we carry is the weight of our inability to forgive ourselves. What kind of God are we in relationship to when we deem ourselves unworthy of forgiveness? Alden Solovy’s prayer invites us not to “cling to grief and fear, anger and shame” and summons us to “surrender to holiness and light.” It can be an easy escape from internal emotional and spiritual growth to labor under the burden of “I never get it right,” or “I’m too far down the road to be forgiven.” Thoughts such as these erect barbed wire barriers around our hearts and our capacity to grow beyond our human tendency to err and to grow from our errors. I find in Solovy’s prayer, and invitation for us to “grow up “and in setting our “lives free” to truly choose life for ourselves and for those we love, and accept with an open heart our God’s abundant love for us.

As we write, our Jewish sisters and brothers are coming to the close of Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement, a time of repentance. As we reflect on Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, we are all called to recall our own need for forgiveness from one another, from our God, and from ourselves. May we “return to our God with all our heart!”

At The Spirit of Life, we as a community, strive to give each other hope, especially when any one of us runs thin on hope. We lighten each other’s load, by walking together and helping in any way we can. We invite you to come and experience life in our community as we contemplate in prayer and move with justice at The Spirit of Life. Through our time of prayer and sharing together, we work together to grow in our self-understanding and in our relationships with God and with God’s people. We celebrate the gift of our faith and the responsibility that is ours as followers of Jesus Christ. It is our prayer that what we as a community experience in our praying together will overflow into the rest of our lives, making us more fully human and more ‘whole’….holy! We invite you to join us in this endeavor and journey with us as we seek to grow in our love of God and to grow in our capacity to be living expressions of God’s loving peace and justice in our world.

May you be moved to open your hearts to our God’s loving grace-filled forgiveness, and may your share that spirit with all in your life. May you grow into a deeper awareness of your call to be Light in our world.

Jean & Ron