What is forgiveness?

I thought this quote expressed the concept of forgiveness beautifully:

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Don't you think that it captures one of the central aspects of forgiveness?

Ash Wednesday

"By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments." -1 John 5:2

Today is the start of Lent - this is a season in the Church calendar that encourages Christians to become conscious of the cost that Christ paid for our lives, and also to recognize that our own lives are finite and precious gifts.  This not only means that my life is a precious gift to me, it means that your life is a precious gift to me.  I cannot be fully human without you.  

The discipline of lent reminds me that I have the capacity to choose (even if my choices seem limited, or insignificant) how I will serve God and others with what remains of my life.  I pray that this period of time will have some significance for you too.

I was saddened today by the dismissal of a colleague and friend of mine, Rev Ecclesia de Lange.  I have known Ecclesia for years - if I am not mistaken I interviewed her where she candidated for our ministry in the Methodist Church, I celebrated her growth through her studies and was present at the service where she was ordained.  I am reminded that the Church, just like me, is not always correct in what it does.  I shall continue to work and pray and do my little bit to see that God's Kingdom of love and grace is established wherever I can - even in the Church.

Isn't this image of the ashen cross lovely?  It comes from my friend and pastor Steven Lottering.

A few quotes left an impression upon me this week.  I thought I would share them with you on Ash Wednesday.

Teach us to sit still ... And let my cry come unto Thee.

- T.S. Eliot, from his poem, "Ash Wednesday"

And this one from a friend I met through the internet - a Methodist minister in the USA.  I thought this quote was both humorous and so true!  There must be more to being a Christ follower than giving up chocolate!

UthGuyChaz What if, for Lent, we gave up thinking that Jesus died so that we could go to church, hear a good sermon, and give up chocolate?

Then there was this one - it has a littl more 'bite' to it.

"It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not quench thirst any more?" -Nietzche

I live my life in public.  It is often costly to do so - I cannot hide who I am.  I find this quote comforting.

"Change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy." -Gandhi

And lastly, from my good friend Pete's blog:

Silence frees us from the need to control others ... A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way. We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on that.- Richard Foster, from his book Freedom of Simplicity

Geekier than thou!

Today I realised just what a Geek I am. I overheard my daughter trying to explain to her friends that her Daddy is a Doctor, but not a Doctor who operates on people, no, her daddy reads books, looks at people's brains, teaches people, and loves computers....

Yup, even my daughter thinks I am Doctor Geek. Well, in 2007 there is nothing cooler than being a Geek! The world is changing! Girls used to love football players, now they love the guy who can operate their Personal Video Recorder, hack the local municipality computer to squash their traffic fines, and who is geeky enough to work for Apple, Google or Microsoft (in that order) and get the BIG MONEY!

You may remember this wonderful cartoon that I blogged about a year and half ago (June 2005)? It illustrates that Geeks rule in the new world!

So, to remind you of that, I thought I would use this fallow time between Christmas and New year to share a few Geek quotes... Learn these and you'll be off to a good Geek start for 2007. They come from here.

Top 10 Geek Quotes:
1. There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. - Unknown

2. If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0 - T-Shirt

3. Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips." - Unknown

4. My pokemon bring all the nerds to the yard, and they're like you wanna trade cards? Darn right, I wanna trade cards, I'll trade this but not my charizard. - Unknown

5. 1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 a l1f3 - tee shirt

6. I'm not anti-social; I'm just not user friendly - T-Shirt

7. Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Unknown

8. A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. - Unknown

9. This one's my favourite! I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code
- Unknown

10. My software never has bugs. It just develops random features. - Unknown

There you have it... If you understand more than 5 of these you're a Geek. If you understand number 1, you're rated an UBER Geek (with ubermicro.... See www.purpwnage.com for more on ubermicro). However, based on my daughter, I am Geekier than thou!

Any other UberGeeks out there!? Any better quotes? I'd love to hear from you! The comments button is just a mouse click away.

PS. The title for this post, and the cartoon, come from a great website called geek culture... I bought a few pins and T-Shirts from them. They also have a fantastic daily cartoon!