Interlude on forgiveness

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FORGIVENESS AS CLOTHES

Forgiveness wasn't something she had but someting she put on, a sort of invisible coat that altered the current of the air in both directions. What seemed magical could be seen as everyday and recognized as reality, after all. It was not a transaction, not part of a trnasaction: "forgive and you'll be forgiven". Rather the 2 were a single act, they happened as one or did not happen. If you could feel it coming in, you could let it go out as well. That was because it wasn't you, wasn't yours. It was something beyond the human auriole, a golden plasma on which the human fed. She tried to wear it like a coat. The hard part really was to forgive yourself, to let it go, to entrust.

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Forgiveness was the kind of clothing that you could not take off. It was a clothing that you wore communally. It was the natural thing to have on. Natural, actually rather bizarre and awkward. Always in the style of no style. It was so always right, so profoundly right, that it had even made its truce with fashion, long ago, as no other clothing ever had: forgiveness was out of fashion the year it was introduced, out of fashion the following year, out of fashion now, and had never for a single moment, even by accident, been in fashion. Its transcendence had been to be despised always. It fit awkwardly onto every size. And yet there were always people who, as if unable to control themselves, had felt moved to put it on, take it on. Without these people the world would probably have run down long ago. Though you never saw them on runways or in magazines, that was ever so okay with them, they were altogether fine with that, my love. Or if not fine, for God's sake, the thing was simply to forgive and move on. Wearing beautiful clothes.

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NAKEDNESS

Forgiveness is a coat that leaves you more naked. Well, at least as yourself. It's not really your coat that you've put on, to be sure. The one that actually owns the coat, that one has never worried about such a petty thing as hiding His nakedness. So the coat doesn't do that, doesn't bother. Au contraire, as the Irishman said. Amd now all your belongings are on show, and, my my, how basically little you are. Better not take the coat off, you bottom, you yawning bowel. Because the coat has taken away all your pride. You are nothing now but your own acceptance of the needy thing you are.

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DIRT OF FORGIVENESS

There are a lot of people walking around wearing the coat of forgiveness now. Some of them sincere, some maybe not, but that (you are forced to say) no longer matters, for a reason to be made clear in a moment, but not now. The people's intention in a way doesn't matter, what matters is simply that they have put the coat on.

These people do not pray the "angry" psalms. They rush through the "angry" psalms as fast as they can, hoping the building will not fall on them till they get past it. That rushing is a thing to be forgiven.

Now this whole forgiveness thing the people have is a crass transactino. The people in the coat are probably trying to scam God, of all lunatic things to do. They are trying to hide themselves in forgiveness, even though forgiveness makes them naked. It makes them look ugly and that too is a device they use to make God look away, not look too closely at them. We are wearing our forgiveness, God, we would like not to be tested anymore. Leave us alone, turn your glance away. We want to pass the test just as we are. Just for showing up in these corny, awkward, unfashionable clothes, we deserve to pass. The people think all this nonsense, and then they look around and see all the scammers in the room with them, people who are using God instead of loving God. So many losers wearing or trying to wear the coat, for the shallowest reason. Phonies. Liars. But these are words the people do not use, these words are not allowed. Not only not to be spoken but definitely never to be thought. Because --

Because we want to be forgiven. And the price (since we have introduced price into this relation), the price is that we can't use judgment to sweep our dirt away. The bargain is that we must remain dirty and let dirt be our cleanliness. And we are obligated to turn a loving eye, a kindly eye, on our neighbor's dirt. In fact, when I put the coat on, my neighbor is the one I put it on.

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