Reflection This Week
TRASH BASKETS

   Remember Art Linkletter? He made a living out of interviewing little kids just to see what they might say in their uninhibited ways. As he discovered, “kids say the darndest things,” or something like that. And they do. They speak with all honesty even as they often do not know what they are truly saying. The words that come forth from their mouths sometimes are truly words of wisdom.

   A friend recently sent me an email of words little kids said at church. From three-year-old Reese came, "Our Father, Who does art in heaven, Harold is His name. Amen." A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am."  One particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."

   Harold is not God’s name – or is it? We don’t know, do we? But, then, giving a name to God surely makes God personal, certainly more than that mysterious figure we try to image but cannot. Give God a name and we just might get a little closer to God, which is certainly not a bad idea even for us older folks. “Harold” might also help us become a better person even if we think we are already one.

   As for our trash baskets: what an image! Our garbage cans are often full of, well, garbage, trash, all that stuff that stinks and smells of our sinfulness. We don’t need others to help us fill ours more than they are, but others do. Their words and actions often instigate us, annoy us, agitate us so much that we say and do that which we should not and, in the process, fill our trash baskets and theirs as well.

   The problem is not the trash basket. Nor is the problem that the basket can get quite full quite easily given our proclivity to be selfish. Rather the problem is that we insist on carrying around a trash basket in the belief that it is full and for which we are heavy laden, all the while forgetting that all those sins that have been stuffed into that basket are forgiven. “Harold’s son, if you will, has already emptied the basket.

   This is not to make light of our sinfulness, to all the trash that we make and make of our lives and that of others because of our selfishness. It is to say that we often look into those baskets and see not forgiveness, emptiness, the opportunity to move on, but we see reminders of our indiscretions and indecencies and get stuck, unable to move on because we cannot accept the fact that “Harold” would ever forgive us. Thus, we reason, if “Harold” cannot forgive us, how can we forgive ourselves?

   An equal issue is our inability to forgive others, forgive those who have put trash in our baskets or trashed us by their words and actions. Perhaps we can’t or won’t accept “Harold’s” forgiveness because we don’t or won’t forgive others. “Harold’s” forgiveness is unconditional, ours is not; and herein lies the rub and is the reason why we get weighed down by our sins, get stuck in our sinfulness and long for something better. We’re certainly not having a good time. Playing or wallowing in garbage is no ones idea of having a good time.

   Forgiveness, it seems, does not come easily for us trash collectors and trash makers, either in the giving or the accepting – on our part, however, not on “Harold’s”. It won’t either, not as long as we insist on carrying around those trash baskets.                        WJP