Repentance, Level I and II.

Repentance, Level I and II.

I remember reading an article by Frederika Matthews-Greene, which later became her book, "Whatever Happened to Repentance?" She observes that the first words Jesus said, in the first Gospel written down, were, "Repent and Believe the Good News."

I find those words exciting. They fill me with energy. Believe. Believe. The word has the sense for me of worlds opening out, infinite possibilities, mountains moving, the molecular structure of stubborn things changing--water becomes wine, water becomes a solid road, the bitter waters of Marah become sweet, the salty waters of Ezekiel 47 become fresh again. Everything is possible for him who believes.

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What about repentance? Here's a favourite sonnet of mine.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

 by Rainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must revise your life.

Rilke looks at sheer classical beauty. He then, presumably, considers his own life. How is he to create anything akin to this sheer loveliness? For that, he must revise his life.

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As a writer (not as a blogger, a hobby I find liberating) , I am obsessed with revision, far too obsessed. But to see a beautiful, shapely piece emerge out of masses of inchoate drafts is an immensely satisfying experience, worth going through all the stress of the drafts.

It's the same way with life, tweak it, tweak it, get it more efficient, smarter, cleverer, happier,

working better in every way. Both my husband, Roy, and I love this process of revising our

lives, sometimes in the light of common-sense and self-discipline, sometimes in the light of what Jesus says and teaches. That's the fun part of repentance--when you examine your life in the quiet places with God, and he sheds his wisdom and love upon it, gives you little editorial

suggestions one might say, wake earlier, be more hospitable, learn to slow down and just look

at your children, spend more time with Roy, be more conscious of your diet, don't neglect your physical health, don't leave all your housework for one day; you love reading--read more. Or little business suggestions on the same lines. Or suggestions to do with your social life for instance, friendships he might mean you to pursue, or activities to drop…..

But sometimes, repentance can feel like hell. Our rector enacted repentance on Sunday, you are going in one direction; you stop and turn and go in another direction. When the direction you were going was not particularly pleasant or satisfying, repentance feels great. But what if the direction you were going in felt great in the short run? Say, indiscipline in sleeping, eating, bearing your share of domestic burdens, reading and writing to the exclusion of other duties, delicious laziness, overdoing a pleasurable addiction that gets you nowhere.

In writing terms again, one would then need to “kill one’s darlings.” And that, as I said, feels like hell. But one has to, for Christ walks on the steep and narrow way, and we cannot afford to let him get too far ahead of us, or to take the broad and easy path on which he is not.

When the Lord outlines the basics of prayer, he includes this, “Forgive us our sins.” And we would feel jolly silly if we prayed this every day without a serious effort to forsake them. Without repentance.

So search me, Oh Lord, and know my heart,

Try me and know my anxious thoughts.

Reveal to me every wicked way in me,

Give me the grace and strength to forsake them,

And lead me in the ways everlasting.
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You know when repentance is particularly useful and salutary? When you find your thoughts preoccupied with someone else's sin, stupidity, abuse of power, whatever...


What energy is there in this? None at all. Just anger which cannot be channeled usefully. However, if instead of focusing on the speck, or granted, the beam, in other people's eyes, we focus on our own beams, we repent of our sins, we ask God to help us with the sins which are so deeply entangled with the fabric of our personality that we view them as just part of who we are--well, in that there is hope of change, and energy to change. And if we combine repentance with prayer to the God of all mercy, change will come. 

  

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