Forgiveness is on my to do list. This is not simply the repetition of a line in the prayer that many of us know. 

 

It is not as if such subjects can be mastered, like when you ace an exam in Biology 101. Answer every question correctly. Know the material cold. Plus when you sit down hunched over a desk with a number two pencil you know that mitochondria is on the test. 

 

I suppose that part of the challenge is because forgiveness is not simply something you memorize. It is a quality you assimilate into your way of being. Compassion melds with your vocabulary, centers your eyeballs when they want to roll, soaks into the crinkle of your eyebrows. Keeps your hands off your hips. 

 

Life has a tricky way of camouflaging infractions. She shades them with innocuous designs while ballooning the impact. The other day I was angry with someone and spent energy justifying it to myself. Then in what I can only regard as an intervention by God I needed help from that person. In an instant I was relieved to have held my tongue, though my inner prattle had had a heyday. Forgiveness no longer felt like grand benevolence as much as a survival technique. 

 

One time when I was shopping with three small children, they got the clever idea to nab a box of band aids off the shelf and put them on. It was naughtiness in action, but all I could do was laugh. Which did nothing to impart the seriousness of the situation. On another occasion the twins brought me a bunch of tulips, only they were filched from someone else's garden. Then there were flamboyant boys who rode too fast, jumped too soon, and landed with blood and tears. 

 

Those were the easy ones to forgive. But what of the others? 

 

What I hope to unpack in a summer of focused attention, is not the skill of pinpointing another person's wrongs in need of my pardon. A better use of my breath would be to try on mercy for size.