One of the sermons is on forgiveness. It is dated June 1947.
I don’t know what the occasion was. I might have been thinking of the Marshall Plan, I suppose. I don’t find much in it to regret. It interprets “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” in light of the Law of Moses on that subject. That is, the forgiveness of literal debt and the freeing of slaves every seventh year, and then the great restoration of the people to their land, and to themselves if they were in bondage, every fiftieth year. And it makes the point that, in Scripture, the one sufficient reason for the forgiveness of debt is simply the existence of debt. And it goes on to compare this to divine grace, and to the Prodigal Son and his restoration to his place in his father’s house, though he neither asks to be restored as son nor even repents of the grief he has caused his father.
I believe it concludes quite effectively. It says Jesus puts His hearer in the role of the father, of the one who forgives. Because if we are, so to speak, the debtor (and of course we are that, too), that suggests no graciousness in us. And grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we also can forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves.
That still seems right to me. I think it is a sound reading of the text. Well, in 1947 I was almost seventy, so my thinking should have been fairly mature at that point. And your mother would have heard me preach that sermon, come to think of it. She first came to church on Pentecost of that year, which I think was in May, and never missed a Sunday after it except the one.
It rained, as I have said, but we had a good many candles lighted, which has always been our custom for that service, when we could afford them. And there were a good many flowers. And when I saw there was a stranger in the room, I do remember feeling pleased that the sanctuary should have looked as cheerful as it did, that it should have been such a pleasant place to step into out of the weather. I believe that day my sermon was on light, or Light. I suppose she hasn’t found it, or she doesn’t remember it, or she doesn’t think it was especially good. I’d like to see it, though.
I do enjoy remembering that morning. I was sixty-seven, to be exact, which did not seem old to me. I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.
Once, I went out with Glory to take some things to that little baby. The family lived just across the West Nishnabotna, and when we came to the bridge we saw the two children, the baby and her mother, playing there in the river. We drove on to the house and set the food we had brought by the fence. We didn’t approach the house, because that pack of dogs came roaring out to the gate and no one appeared to call them off — we always brought canned ham, canned milk, and so on, things the dogs couldn’t get into. The little girl must have heard the car passing and the dogs barking and known that we had come to her house, since it was a Monday. She would have ignored us if she did. She loyally reflected her father’s view of us. She was offended by our concern and our helpfulness and let us know as much by ignoring us as often as we gave her the chance.
And I must say I do not find that hard to understand. Her father clearly assumed that we were going to so much bother and expense in order to keep Jack out of trouble. And while no one ever said such a thing or even hinted at such an idea, I can’t say he was altogether wrong. Nor can I say that it was no part of Jack’s motive in confessing to his father, that he knew poor old Boughton would respond to the situation as he did. That would explain why he left the Plymouth.
In any case, Glory and I parked the car along the road a hundred yards beyond the bridge and walked back and stood on the bridge and watched those children. The baby, who had just begun to walk, didn’t have a stitch on, and the little girl was wearing a dress that was soggy to her waist. It was late summer. The river is very shallow at that time of year, and the bottom was half exposed and braided like water. There were sandbars right across, the bigger ones small jungles of weedy vegetation weedily in bloom, with butterflies and dragonflies attending on them like spirits. The little girl was practicing the maternal imperative from time to time, the way children sometimes do when they are playing. Maybe she knew she was being overheard. She was trying to dam a rivulet with sticks and mud, and the baby was trying to understand the project well enough to help. She would bring her mother handfuls of mud and handfuls of water, and her mother would say, “Now, don’t you go stepping on it. You’re just messing up all my work!”
After a while the baby cupped her hands and poured water on her mother’s arm and laughed, so her mother cupped her hands and poured water on the baby’s belly, and the baby laughed and threw water on her mother with both hands, and the little girl threw water back, enough so that the baby whimpered, and the little girl said, “Now, don’t you go crying! What do you expect when you act like that.” And she put her arms around her and settled her into her lap, kneeling there in the water, and set about repairing her dam with her free hand. The baby made a conversational sound and her mother said, “That’s a leaf. A leaf off a tree. Leaf,” and gave it into the baby’s hand. And the sun was shining as well as it could onto that shadowy river, a good part of the shine being caught in the trees. And the cicadas were chanting, and the willows were straggling their tresses in the water, and the cottonwood and the ash were making that late summer hush, that susurrus. After a while we went on back to the car and came home. Glory said, “I do not understand one thing in this world. Not one.”
This came to my mind because remembering and forgiving can be contrary things. No doubt they usually are. It is not for me to forgive Jack Boughton. Any harm he did to me personally was indirect, and really very minor. Or say at least that harm to me was probably never a primary object in any of the things he got up to. That one man should lose his child and the next man should just squander his fatherhood as if it were nothing — well, that does not mean that the second man has transgressed against the first.
I don’t forgive him. I wouldn’t know where to begin.
***
You and Tobias are out in the yard. You have put your Dodgers cap on a fence post, and the two of you are chucking pebbles at it. Accuracy will come, probably. “Ah, man!” says T, and screws up his face and does a tightfisted dance of frustration, as if he had achieved a near miss. Now off you go to gather more pebbles, Soapy tagging after at a fastidious distance, as if she had some business of her own that happened to be taking her in more or less the same direction.
I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing. And here comes Jack Boughton with his bat and his glove. You and T. are running up the street to meet him. He has set his glove on top of your head and you think that is a very good thing. You are holding it on with both hands and striding straight-legged along beside him, barefoot and bare-bellied like some primordial princeling. I can’t see the Popsicle streaks down your belly, but I know they’re there. T. is carrying the bat. Since Jack never looks entirely at ease, it should not surprise me that he looks a little tense. But here he is, coming through the gate. I can hear him speaking with your mother on the porch. It sounds pleasant. I believe my heart would prefer that I stay here in this chair, at least for the time being.