The Lectio Letter - Issue #55 - Becoming a People of Forgiveness | Part III

“I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. … If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.”

― Marilynne Robinson, Home

“She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord … I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Home

“I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.” 

― Marilynne Robinson

“It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Welcome to Issue #55 of the Lectio Letter. This members-only newsletter is filled with music, film and food suggestions, links, and an article written by yours truly.

Marilynne Robinson, who I quoted above, is my favourite fiction writer. She has such a keen eye for intricate details of the human lives she writes about in her much-celebrated Gilead series. A series detailing a litany of lives arching towards Godliness in a backwater town of brokenness. I’ve included them because this part of the series reflects on the inner experience of navigating forgiveness.

In the previous two parts, I’ve tried to articulate the theological basis from which forgiveness can emerge. This part is in some ways the hardest to write because it touches on how we navigate our inner world in the process of forgiveness. Humans are endlessly complex, each like vast “civilisations”, as Robinson has written elsewhere. The inevitable danger of writing about forgiveness as a principle is that each person’s experience of forgiveness can be ridden over roughshod.