The notion of forgiveness was floating around in me during my morning sitting today. This coming after trying to finalize a decision with Jack on a high-price item for our home.
The two of us have very different approaches to such things. He likes to spend time analyzing prices, specs, and reviews. I tend to either know what I want, or I figure it out with the information available. For me, it often boils down to establishing a positive relationship with a salesperson. Then I want to act. Jack is more interested in comparing information and feeling satisfied he’s getting the best deal.
Forgive us Our Trespasses
Admittedly, Jack’s approach usually ends up with a positive result. But it drives me crazy because it takes so much time and energy to do all the parsing. We’d been going through this for weeks and ended up in a negative space with each other yesterday. The result was one of those acrimonious downward spirals that wasn’t going to go anywhere.
So back to this morning, that was the space I was in. During my sitting, it came to me that I don’t want the time I have left on this earth with Jack to be spent bickering. This thought combined with a Lenten reading about forgiveness and the Lord’s Prayer, “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others who trespass against us….” These feelings and thoughts were floating in the background along with my morning exercise practice.
Full Bodied Forgiveness
What occurred, was a letting-go, a melting, of the mental and physical tensions of my resentment towards Jack’s way of doing things. The experience was one of a full-bodied forgiveness. The result was that I wanted to ask him to forgive me.
Now, I know well enough that this isn’t the end of our habitual sparing. I do tend to blurt my thoughts out. But I also know that my wish not to get caught in that bickering habit came from a different place in me. Or maybe I should say came from a more unified place in me.
What Forgiveness Means
It’s also given me a taste of what forgiveness really means. I had to let go of something in myself, which takes work, and that work resulted in a change in me, which affected my relationship with Jack. It was like things just let go and priorities got reorganized.
PS: When Jack came out of his sitting this morning, he was in a similar space. It was lovely. Our forgiveness was mutual.