Cow Pastures and Billboards

I was surfing the blog world of some of my friends' friends, listening to some swingin' jazzy Christmas music, and ran accross a blog that made me think. He was talking about forgiveness. It's such a maldefined word these days. It's elusive. It's concrete. It's oppressive. It's easy as pie. It's wiping a slate clean. It's lording superiority. The list goes on and on.

The forgiveness he was talking about is the Christian definition of forgiveness, which has gone through so many translations, who knows what the truth is. Is it the ancient Arabic definition - selflessness and a sense "justice" has been served, or is it the Greek - "ethos" and "pathos?"

I'm thinking both have their points and both define forgiveness - if forgiveness can actually be encompassed by a definition.

I was particularly struck by the author's struggle with other people's definition of forgiveness. I cannot even begin to say how much I struggle with this myself. The South is not a geographical area that espouses forgiveness. It espouses piety, selflessness, sacrifice and self-soul-beating for "evils" thought, committed or yet to happen. If John Calvin were alive today, he would be ecstatic with the churches of the South. Their congregations pulse in time with Calvinism. You are worthless. You are nothing. You are horribly, definitively, eternally wrong and will continually do wrong. Your only aspiration can be to TRY to rise above your sins. You MUST forever be praying for forgiveness - but you'll never actually receive it because you're in a cycle. And don't think, even for one nanosecond, that God loves you as you ARE. You are the disgrace he so nobly chose to redeem.

Ugh! What rot!

My definition of forgiveness is based on acceptance. Accepting that we are not perfect, but profoundly desired after by our Creator. He created each of us as unique, individual spirits to reflect His prism being. We are part of a portrait so large, no canvas could capture it. He revels in our differences, for they reflect His. Why is acceptance so hard to accept? How does this fundamental fact go so wrong for so many? It's baffling to me.

Don't get me wrong. I quite frequently fight with all the different sides of me. I'm a different person day to day sometimes. But why deny all that God embodied you with? Your soul - strange as it may be to other people - is God's "precious."

I am at odds with most churches in my area. I'm too accepting. I love people for who they are, not who they pretend to be or wish they could be. I easily "forgive" people their faults and most of the time don't even think they're faults. More like, lapses in essence of being. People have imitation vanilla moments, but usually return to their pure vanilla selves - eventually.

I'm a freakin' Times Square billboard in a cow pasture! Everyone around me follows the crowd and behaves all meek and mild, and I stand out brilliantly different.

I quite enjoy that - most of the time.

I just wish I had more billboards to hang out with. At least they wouldn't leave a trail of "patties" in their wake.