Digging Out

Quite a while back, my wife and I went out to dinner withour four parents.  My father-in-law was abrittle diabetic and so eating had a necessary element to it.  It took the waiter, about 10 minutes to bringus water, I explained to him, on the side about my f-i-l’s condition and askedif he would bring us bread immediately. About 20 minutes later, after I got up, found the waiter and askedagain, the bread arrived.  About 20minutes after that he came by to take our order.  The meals didn’t arrive all together foreveryone.  He seemed completelydisinterested with our table and his work. In fact, from his face, I’d have guessed that he was simplydisinterested in life.

When it came time for to settle the check, I said we weren’tleaving a tip.  Both my Dad and my wife’sDad protested sincerely.  Of course, wewere going to tip.  I said, with equalsincerity that the waiter had treated us atrociously.  But they were adamant and we ended upproviding a tip.

I was bugged, so bugged that, decades later, I can stillremember the dinner, the restaurant, the scene around the table and the face ofwaiter.  I had decided to teach this guya lesson.  At the end of the meal my fathersspoke to me of the kind of lesson I wanted to teach… but I couldn’t hear whatthey were saying.

Recently, I came upon a quote from Martin Luther King,jr.  “Forgiveness is not an occasionalact, it is a constant attitude.”  AndI’ve been thinking through cultivating a constant attitude of forgiveness.  What does that look like?  I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking into mysoul and bringing up this memory is one of the ways the Spirit digs me out fromunder the burden of bitterness.

There are two parts that go into a constant attitude offorgiveness, it seems to me.  The firstpart is what we don’t know and the second is what we do know.  What we don’t know is “what brought someoneelse to this moment you’re sharing.”  Wehave no idea what someone else has gone through that month, week, day orhour.  How would my attitude have changedif I’d learned that the waiter, 20-30 minutes before we arrived, had just heardhis mother was dying at a moment and at a distance that meant he couldn’t getto her side… and he needed this job.

The part we do know is that this other person is a humanbeing, of a kind with us… which is the basis of kindness, knowing and sharingthat we’re of a kind.  What the Spirit isteaching me is that I need to know the lesson I want to teach others.  When I want to teach someone a lesson, I wantit to be the one I’m learning.  Forgiveness…kindness…

Blessings (they’re all around us),Geoff