Teach Me About Forgiveness with Kristofer
Teach Me About Forgiveness
As we continue this journey in the Easter season, seeking signs of the Resurrected One in our daily lives, Kristofer shares a poem called Teach Me About Forgiveness. The poem is a reflection on the ways in which God connects us through creation and calls us to be stewards. It was written after the drowning death of one of his closest friends in college, in an effort to make sense of tragic loss and find purpose again. Tomorrow is Earth Day. How are you being called to make amends and be a steward of this fragile earth our island home?
Teach me about forgiveness, as I walk your shores alone.
A piece of trash here, one there,
As my bag fills with angry articles of consumption.
Teach me to forgive - us - for our blindness.
We use, and abuse, and forget, thanklessly
Combing the world, producing, reproducing, consuming, wasting.
Teach me of your ways - your waves - of forgiveness,
As they wash - one after another - on to your sandy shores,
Sweeping these things I call trash
Across and amongst other things I call treasures:
My judgment, your forgiveness.
Teach me, as you wash over me
Freeing me, with your embrace
Leaving me, with yet another chance to make amends:
A piece of trash from your shore to my bag.
Teach me about your depths, as I long to search mine:
Another chance here, another chance there,
Another piece here, another piece there.
I continue on, collecting, but what,
Collecting, as my bag turns softly from anger to peace.
Teach me to turn - teach me to change graciously
Like the waves that leave you, only to return:
The waves that leave me with my waste, with my pieces of trash,
With my pieces of me,
With my peace of you,
And the recollection of a connection between the waste, the wave, the water, and the witness.
Teach me about forgiveness, and your taking of my friend.
Teach me to forgive, as I stare into those deep blue, oceanic eyes - so familiar -
And ask, “why...why did you leave us?”
The answer comes in a whisper through the crashing waves.
“Did I leave you - them - in your worry and your waste?”
“Did I leave - or do you still think yourself just a wave?”
Teach me about the freedom of your waters
And the knowing that we all come home sometime
With our bags of trash.
But until then, I’ll continue to collect, walking the beach,
Remembering - trying -
Not alone, but with many.
Another chance to pick another piece of trash:
A peace between wave, water, forgiveness, and a friend.
One more chance to be taught forgiveness.
Teach me to walk and be forgiveness, my Friend.
Teach me to forgive you
For leaving me
The one holding the bag.
Dedicated to a good friend and written with another hand on mine.
-Kristofer Lindh-Payne
