We're taking our Church Without Walls outside our walls. We're hitting the streets and going to the fairs and the parks and the Habitat builds and the theaters and the concerts and whatever we can find to do together. At frequent but not necessarily regular intervals, staff and lay persons will be hosting informal gatherings for MCC Austin members and friends. Sometimes the events will be strictly social, sometimes service oriented, and sometimes spiritually based.
 
Your first opportunity to be a part of this new endeavor comes this Saturday afternoon, January 30. Rev. Karen invites any of you who haven't seen Avatar (or who want to see it again) to join her at 3:00 at Regal Gateway Stadium 16, 9700 Stonelake Blvd., Capital of Texas Hwy at 183, Austin, TX, 78759. Simply meet up with the MCC group outside the room in which Avatar is showing and we'll sit together, watch the movie, and then convene somewhere to discuss it. If you've already seen the movie and want to take part in the discussion with us, meet us outside the theater at  5:40. Click here to see the trailer for Avatar

 (continued from above)

Then there is the third side of the coin. (Yes, I said "third side" intentionally to hint at how difficult it is to wrap our minds around this other aspect of the forgiving process.) The third side is the one that has to do with forgiving ourselves.

My guess is that many of you have conflicting thoughts around giving and receiving forgiveness and have struggled with some form of these questions: "Does forgiveness always imply reconciliation and restoration of former relationships? How do we forgive a whole community such as a dysfunctional family?  What do we do with our feelings of anger and hurt when trying to forgive?"

If you've struggled with any of the complexities involving forgiveness, I invite you to attend our one day retreat called "The F Word: A Lenten Retreat on Forgiveness." Rev. Mona West will guide us through this exploration of forgiveness on Saturday, February 6, from 9:00 a.m. to noon at MCC Austin. Mona, Director of MCC's Office of Formation and Leadership Development and a member of MCC Austin, is a knowledgeable and gracious leader whose guidance through this retreat is certain to be a blessing to all who attend.

If you plan to attend the retreat you will need to pre-register so that we can adequately prepare for the size of the group. Please email or call Courtney Webster in the church office to register. The cost is $10.

 
If you are unable to attend the retreat or if you prefer to contemplate forgiveness in private, I want to offer you something I recently learned that you might want to include in your thinking. A study of the etymology of the word forgive points back to the Old English words for "completely" and giefan "give." This translation directs us toward one of our modern definitions of forgive: "to give up desire or power to punish."

Thinking about forgiveness in that context gives me hope. I know I fall short of the biblical exhortation in Colossians to "Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as God has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." I also know that in my attempts to seek forgiveness, I often fail to express adequately my sorrow over having caused pain and fail to communicate my true desire to make amends. And sometimes, I hurt people in ways that keep them from being able to trust my regret and my desire to make things right.

That's a hopeless place to be. But if I can move into a place in which I give up desire or power to punish, especially the desire to punish myself for my transgressions, I have hope that I can start fresh and live in a kinder, more thoughtful way. If I can get to that point, I might even get more comfortable with the idea that God forgives me...over and over and over.

 

Grace and Mercy,