a list, and forgiveness

How are your jigsaw skills? How are your competitive skills? Here is for an online jigsaw puzzle challenge for you.

On my list of things to do is to make a list of things to do. Exciting things to get you coming back here. I suppose my Wii fitness updates won't be as exciting for you all as they are for me.
And if you're curious about our IBD experiences, or about how our letter writing is going, you know right where to go. I like what I've seen some of you do with your blogs and "challenges", which make us all want to stay tuned and check out the updates. I want to do something like that. I tried to get Bonnie to post her "30-day Bean Challenge" on here, because I'm sure that would really be a gas. But there's got to be other clever ideas to keep you reading. Okay, true to form, I now have a list. I don't think it will exactly get the trumpets blaring, but now I am thinking that in addition to the usual randomness, you may also get a smattering of....

Intriguing Translations and Idioms (um...)
Neato Websites (let me stumble upon that for you)
Sermons Worth Repeating
Knowledge Worth Knowing (what's that, crickets?)

Okay, so you see, I need to work on my list. It's not the most sensational. Yet.

Today's sermon at church, though, was strangely moving to me. And odd, because really we got a play by play of the opera--yes, opera--of Dead Man Walking. You might wonder what kind of church we are going to, so let me tell you Episcopalian now and we'll get that out of the way. In fact, I just learned that you can not only listen to but watch this very sermon, which has about 75 seconds of commentary other than the literary relating.

Fr. Bob Wells - Sermon 2-20 from Dunstanite on Vimeo.

I want to tell you, that with these sermon-of-the-mount-sermons of the current lectionary, I can't go a week without thinking of forgiveness in my own life. And I never saw myself as being one with forgiveness issues. But this last decade has been a doozie, and I find myself on the fence with my personal fulfillment/development on account of my ability or inability to forgive. In spite of myself.

Upon further inspection I wonder if it's not exactly forgiveness I long for, but resolution. Like, I am forgiving/ have forgiven, but there is still a tension because the matter is unresolved. No confrontation has occurred. I just don't know.

And since you're still reading, I'll go ahead and continue so as to possibly appease your curiosity and illustrate my pains. The part of my heart that doesn't feel right is about my father's siblings and what happened in that part of my family. In the spirit of my good old grandma, I think I can accept even the worst of humanity in my loved ones (And mind you, even though sometimes I feel like it, nobody's actions or intentions here get so close as to be near the worst of humanity.), can embrace even their shortcomings or trespasses as they trespass against me, or against my good old grandparents, or father, which interestingly is more the case here I think. Like I said, all is either forgiven, or something close to it. But I think the tension remaining, which becomes apparent whenever I hear a sermon about forgiveness, has to do with never taking a chance to reconcile or at least resolve something with said loved ones. And honestly, I just don't know when or how that's going to happen. Which makes me wonder what's really going on there with my forgiveness, fear, love, or what. To be examined....

And, now, that's about enough currenttroydanielbecker for you today, wouldn't you say?