of

tabula rasa's and rows of welts

of high blood pressure and bleeding nose

of tumbling down stairs and bloody beatings

of sparse mem'ries and an exceptional aunt

of constant corrections and brewing anger

of burning toys and touching butts

of too many niggers and segregated lives

of poison run wild and venomous hearts

of dreams un-grabable and untamed minds

of hatreds embedded and childhood abuses

of minding children and being too young

of depressing language and inflamed murders

of so many "shoulds" that feed depression

tying one down to the bottom of hell

a dot on a page in the hist'ry of race

destructive exclusion discrimination swelled

...and the toxins swelled, poisoning the heart

crushing the soul before life began

*Reflections of N.T. Wright:

-...in order to love our neighbor as ourselves we need to love ourselves first, so we know what the standard should be!  This point is well known and well taken.  But the same applies, more subtly perhaps, to the question of forgiveness.  Those with any pastoral experience will have met the person who says, "Well, I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself."  We can understand what they mean.  But it is precisely here, I suggest, that the prayer, "Deliver us from evil" comes right home into the human heart, imagination and emotions - or, if you like, the soul, which as I have said elsewhere is really a way of speaking about "who I am in the presence of God."

It takes spiritual discipline to forgive others; it takes a different though related, spiritual discipline to forgive myself, to echo within in my own heart the glad and generous offer of forgiveness which God holds out to me as well.  Here, too, my sense of self-worth comes not from examining myself and discovering that I'm not so bad after all but from gazing at God's love and discovering that nothing can stand between it and me.  (What we are doing is drawing down from God's future, in which I will know myself to be completely loved and accepted because of the work of Jesus and the Spirit.)  This astonished and grateful acceptance of the free grace and love of God is what some traditions  have meant when they have echoed Paul's language about "justification by faith."