Anger, forgiveness, and hope   

Since the first hours after the planes hit the Twin Towers ten years ago, there began to be a 'new normal.' In a painfully short time, we lost people, and we lost a kind of faith and certainty. We lost a way of living and a degree of freedom. 'Normal' is now "homeland security," surveillance, and a degree of low-grade and almost banal wariness we could not have imagined in America.

At some level, every one of us is hurt, maybe bereft. And I don't think any of us has escaped being angry.

But sometimes it is those who have lost the most who point the way toward healing and hope. Perhaps that's because they were not able to be seduced into denial of their hurt and anger. That is certainly true of those I know whose loved ones or friends died on that day. And I think it's true of New York, too.

This Sunday we'll come together to mark the truth of what we've lost and what we've learned. The reading from the Gospel - - required in our tradition and practice, a kind of denial of possible denial - - is a  parable of Jesus about forgiveness. I don't hold with any magical theories about synchronicity; God didn't "plan" to have us read it this week. It's just that the core of our faith is densely, and inescapably, packed with the hardest stuff. Forgiveness, the credible and real kind anyway, is way up on the hard list.

At Stanford University's Center for Research in Disease Prevention there is something called the Forgiveness Projects, six (so far) rigorous research protocols testing whether there is something real in the ancient religious teachings and more recent psychological theories of forgiveness.

So far, they seem to be on to something anyone remotely familiar with the hard teachings of Jesus at least knows about. Their boiled down set of steps starts with "Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK," and it ends with "Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive."

I'll dare to speak of Jesus' parable and such plain spoken contemporary insights in the context of the solemn, powerful and ultimately hopeful celebration we'll have Sunday.