Last night I had what was, for me, an unusual type of dream.
A teen-aged child's father was dieing, and had to accept a burden of support for her parent that a young child should not have to bear. I was advising her on the need to forgive herself because, not being perfect, she would fall short on occasion. Then I realized that I needed to tell her to forgive her father as well since she would have anger at him for putting this burden on her, though no parents wants to be a burden to their children. Then I was a doctor talking to the family telling them all they needed to forgive themselves and each other and realized I needed to ask for their forgiveness as well for my failings as a doctor.
When I woke and remembered the dream, it was clearly related to the fact that both my parents recently died and my wife diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a kind of blood cancer. I have been trying to deal with the guilt and anger of this for some time now.
The whole arch of the dream was an every widening circle of people that required mutual forgiveness.
While my waking thoughts lacked the emotional intensity of the dream, I was struck with the feeling that I could benefit from a lot of forgiving. I am consumed with the feeling that the world will be a worse place for my grandchildren and blame political opponents that seem to be bent on destroying our nation and the world and but blame politicians who supposedly support my views but fall so short of what needs to be done. And I am sure I would be the main beneficiary of any forgiveness I could offer them.
And perhaps their could be some forgiveness of self-indulgent and self-righteous bloggers.
