Sundance

Ok, so I tried like nineteen thousand times to upload some pics from my trip to no avail. (Exaggeration is a beautiful thing idinit?)

Sundance was, as I expected, a wonderful experience. The films were, overall, not as emotionally impactful as last year. Every film I walked out of last year bowled me over with sadness or happiness or fury or whatever. Most films this year produced a lackluster "well, ok."

However, this paved the way for God to do some extremely powerful heart stuff with the film Forgiven.
The story has absolutely NOTHING to do with what is going in my life - it references no personality, no action, no event - nothing! YET, in the midst of that, God saw fit to release in me the knowledge of the unforgivable.
While watching, the painful realization that the unforgivable has happened to me, to all of us, has occurred. Some people have sustained more injury - some have a long, long list of the unforgivable in their lives. Some have been beaten and betrayed by those who were called to be closest to them, some have been denied love and grace by those who preached it. Some have been sacrificed to the lions in order to appease the king of self. All completely unforgivable.

This sounds really harsh - but ya know - it is true and real. We learn from the gospels that Christ says that there is only one unforgivable sin - you know, the HS blasphemy stuff. I think we take this verse and apply it to ourselves and that causes us to deny our own feelings of betrayal and pain. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is only one sin that GOD finds unforgivable. But we humans, well, there are a whole hellava lot of sins that we find, or at least I find, unforgivable. And that is actually a good thing.

It is good because until we ADMIT that we feel pained and beaten, until we fess up to the fact that we cannot forgive, until we stand naked in our pissed-offense in front of our Creator, until we relinquish our inability to wash anybody's slate clean, we cannot truly forgive them. I learned that I cannot forgive, I can only allow God to forgive through me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me - forgiveness is a vastly more spiritual encounter than we realize.

I felt God tell me it was ok to say out loud to the world, to myself, to my family, to my friends, etc. that I feel they have done the unforgivable.
THEN I am to forgive anyway - rather let go of wanting God to not forgive them - let go of thinking that God did not see.
I learned that forgiveness is not forgiveness until I admit that there is a sacrifice involved. Christ said that it was easy to love those who love us - anyone can do that - but to love those who hate you - to forgive those who do not deserve it - that is true love, deep love, and commitment to God.
I have discovered that I have only thought that I have forgiven people.
Now I can actually let God forgive people, and that lets me forgive people.
I felt the presence of a Father God in that theater: he whooshed through my soul with great grief and asked me to do the unforgivable: to release those who do not deserve to be released.
I guess that means that true forgiveness means releasing those who do not deserve to be released.

I vaguely feel that God really has kept every one of my tears in bottle.
I am sitting on the couch next to a God who sees and is hurting next to me. In this I find great comfort.
Paracaleo.