Random Acts of Poetry: Five Dollar Forgiveness

When I was in high school, I had to borrow money every once in a long while, but often it was the other way around. On one occasion, I remember handing out a $5 bill to buy a friend’s burger. I expected it back. After a few days, I didn’t see it come my way, so I reminded him. I wasn’t mean or cruel about it, like a loan shark, but my heart was wrong.

I often held debts like these against people, and secretly fumed because I felt that they were disrespecting me as a person. Then I stumbled upon a discussion of the phrase “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” in N.T. Wright’s book, The Lord and His Prayer. Wright conveys that a better translation may be “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” and that these debts would be both spiritual and financial. He asks:

“Could it be that we could work and pray for Jubilee, for the cancellation of the debts which are crippling half the world and keeping the other half in clover?”

I was stunned into repentance. Here I was, holding five dollars over a friend's head, when Jesus wanted me to pray for the forgiveness of debt?  I needed to get in line.

This kind of forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer is powerful. The free release of debts, both spiritual and financial, calls the powers of this world, and our own lives, to task.  As we have been freely forgiven, we must also freely forgive.

Poetic response

Maureen Doallas captures this prayerful sentiment well in her poem Erosion as the speaker of the poem wills herself to “put one hand / next to the other, / then you do the same.” Forgiveness is a spiritual moment between two people, a kind act of mercy that brings same-ness back to a relationship.

Forgiveness is seen in the “digital broadside” Monica creates with her poem Rock Heart. Along with a picture of heart-shaped stones, Monica truly highlights the power and purpose of forgiveness in the voice of the forgiven, the one “…who can see / hearts in the gravel.”

Turning to routine settings, both L.L. Barkat and Elizabeth Sands Wise capture how forgiveness is interwoven into the most normal aspects of our day, whether it is sleeplessness in Barkat’s poem Lenten or physical exercise in Sands Wise’s poem Enough for Today.

The gift of forgiveness removes our burdens. It recognizes us as both the “forgiving and forgiven,” to take a line from Karin’s poem Priceless, and heals us. This sort of gift is pictured in the image of finding a “better” name for a daughter in Megan’s poem Namesake, which explores how out of forgiveness comes new life, both for a child and for a name that matches her perfectly.

Forgiveness starts out small. It’s as simple as learning to not chase people down for $5 bills. The real power of forgiveness is found in how all these small acts of forgiveness, of which mine are just a part, and yours are just a part, work in the world to bring hope, life and new creation―Jubilee!

All participants in this month's Random Acts of Poetry

• Abigail's eyes fixed on you
• Ann's Wiped
• Darlene's In the Grace
• Elizabeth's Enough for Today
• Glynn's The Violence of Forgiveness
• Karin's Priceless
• Linda's As You have been Forgiven
• L.L.'s Lenten
• Maureen's Erosion
• Megan's Namesake
• Monica's Rock Heart
• Patricia's Pardon
• Sandra's Not Yet
• Thomas's Unrequited

Image by indigoignition. Used by permission via Flickr. Post written by Thomas Turner.

• Tags:  
• culture
• forgiveness
• lent
• poetry
• random acts of poetry

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