[Oe List ...] A Question I would like to ponder in company

[KroegerD at aol.com]

Margaret,

I believe we all wrestle with the very same question.  There is, of course a clearly defined and experienced sens of guilt.

I believe that the source of absolution is apart from the source of guilt.  The latter I will leave to the shrinks.

I choose to believe that absolution is not a sense or feeling; but rather a pronouncement from the "other".

I have to decide (and redecide, redecide....) to accept or reject that pronouncement as true.  But whether I accept it or not, it stands pronounced.

And it is pronounced even in the absense of my taking responsibility for my deed/thought/inaction.  Confession is not necessay for absolution.  confession only helps me become clear on the context of the absolution.

Grace and Peace

-- 
Dick Kroeger



Subj:    [Oe List ...] A Question I would like to ponder in company 
  Date:    2/4/2005 10:18:37 AM Eastern Standard Time 
  From:    "aiseayew" <aiseayew at iowatelecom.net> 
  To:    <OE at wedgeblade.net> 
  Reply-To:    Order Ecumenical Community  <OE at wedgeblade.net> 
  Sent from the Internet (Details) 
 


Dear Colleagues,

It has been dark, cloudy and foggy, for several days here in central Iowa--a little unusual for this time of year.  Perhaps that is a part of the reason I found moisture seeping from my eyes in the middle of my shift last night.  I tried and tried to come up with the question underneath my rampaging thoughts and it formed like this:   Where does the sense of absolution come from?

I have not forgotten that absolution is a response to accountability.  I am perfectly clear that some would say it comes in the address of the Word, but I know that I often choose to reject the address of the Word in my life.  That the past is approved is just a fact.   It does not necessarily provide the sense of absolution.  Throw forgiveness and grief  into the mix.  There are things for which I have been forgiven for which there is no sense of absolution.  There are things for which I have not been forgiven for which I feel no need of a sense of absolution.   Is there is a sense of absolution at the end of grief.  Does grief ever end?  How do you know?

I may be searching for a feeling, but what engenders it?  I haven't forgotten that grace happens or it doesn't.  I have never associated a feeling or a "sense" with the experience of grace.

I know of no other place I can pose this question, which might have been struggled with in other contexts.  My e-mail address is aiseayew at iowatelecom.net if you want to reply apart from the listserv.

Thanks in advance for the dialogue,

Margaret