on slow progress
"There is no forgiveness--none whatever--that comes so difficult as the forgiveness wherewith we forgive ourselves. I sometimes think it ought to have been included in the Lord's Prayer. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive ourselves--as well as those who trespass against us." It is not too difficult --not usually--to forgive those who trespass against us. However deeply we resent an injury at first, after a while we are ready to forgive it. Our trouble is that it is not the injury done to us, but the injury we do that is hard to forgive. We can forgive others, in one measure or another, but we cannot forgive ourselves. The person who has done us a wrong we are not embarrassed to meet; but the person to whom we have done a wrong --we cannot forgive him because we cannot forgive ourselves. He is a constant reminder of what we want to avoid remembering--that we did a wrong. So we project the wrong we did out on to him; and such is the ingenuity of our minds that we provide arguments to persuade ourselves that we did not do the wrong; it was the other way around; he did it.
But what it comes to is quite plain when we are willing to look at it. We cannot forgive ourselves. And the reason, of course, is that we do not want to admit that we need forgiveness. We want to justify ourselves. Not outwardly, perhaps. No, but in the last analysis. For we do not want to face ourselves as we really are."--A. Powell Davies
I love to ride bicycles. I own a bicycle. It's got a hip name, along the lines of "rockhopper". It is not quite my beloved Peugeot road bike, long ago sold as part of a move. It's a solid little mountain bike.
I never ride it. I don't ride it because it has tires with odd little air spigots on them. In the modern fashion, they require a different clamp than the old-fashioned bike tires I prefer. In this wonderful Spring weather, I want very much to ride that bike, but I am stymied by the problem of inflating two tires.
There are simple solutions--learn to inflate the tires, have the shop change the inner tubes to the easy-to-inflate traditional kind, even get a cheap yard sale bike to ride.
But I do none of those things. I recognize this is because of a combination of poor planning and irresolution. Now that I type this, I see that I will go solve it.
But how many similar things I can solve in my life, if I just define and solve the issue.
I believe the number is greater than one.
But what it comes to is quite plain when we are willing to look at it. We cannot forgive ourselves. And the reason, of course, is that we do not want to admit that we need forgiveness. We want to justify ourselves. Not outwardly, perhaps. No, but in the last analysis. For we do not want to face ourselves as we really are."--A. Powell Davies
I love to ride bicycles. I own a bicycle. It's got a hip name, along the lines of "rockhopper". It is not quite my beloved Peugeot road bike, long ago sold as part of a move. It's a solid little mountain bike.
I never ride it. I don't ride it because it has tires with odd little air spigots on them. In the modern fashion, they require a different clamp than the old-fashioned bike tires I prefer. In this wonderful Spring weather, I want very much to ride that bike, but I am stymied by the problem of inflating two tires.
There are simple solutions--learn to inflate the tires, have the shop change the inner tubes to the easy-to-inflate traditional kind, even get a cheap yard sale bike to ride.
But I do none of those things. I recognize this is because of a combination of poor planning and irresolution. Now that I type this, I see that I will go solve it.
But how many similar things I can solve in my life, if I just define and solve the issue.
I believe the number is greater than one.