Forgive

Well, it’s been a week and a half since I posted last, and about that long since something’s come up to post about. I suppose that there’s just so much going on in the world that I’ve been experiencing that ‘churning’ effect that old computers get when they have too much to think about so they end up not producing anything. I’m kind of bad about that, but I’ll work on it as much as I can (I suppose it’s finally time for me to join the modern era). Of course, I haven’t been completely useless. I’ve spent a lot of my final time at home packing a few things, spending time with my siblings, going out with some of my friends, and really reading a lot of stuff that I wanted to get read. Not that those things were books, but I had a large back-up of magazines and newspaper articles that I wanted to slog through and I’m happy to say that I finally did (perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘magazines;’ it sounds much more erudite, I think, to say ‘periodicals’). That, in turn, provided a few more things to talk about, a few more reasons to delay posting (though, admittedly, not very good reasons), and just carried the cycle further.

No more.

Now, even if it does mean sitting in my bed and typing (which, I’m currently discovering, is an incredibly comfortable and conducive way of doing it), I will get some things done. I’m not promising anything long, anything good, or anything incredibly frequent. So really, I’m not promising anything at all except that when I have something to talk about, I will talk about it.

So then, what do we have to talk about today? Well, I feel as though I should hop on the bandwagon and mention the death of former President Ford. I’ll admit that I don’t know a whole lot about him and his presidency—I wasn’t really around for it, after all—but I still feel as though one major thing about him should be discussed: his forgiveness. When President Ford issued his full and complete pardon to President Nixon shortly after taking office, people were very angry with him. They wanted restitution for what they perceived Nixon did to the country, and the presidential pardon meant that ‘justice’ would not be served. Many people say that that single action cost President Ford the election against then-Governor Carter a few years later. I’m not entirely convinced of that, but certainly, President Ford exhibited the courage to do the right thing even in the face of enormous opposition. Often, the right thing, the thing that will, in the long-run, end up bringing more peace and healing to the nation (state, group, pair, life) is not the easy option. Fortunately, President Ford knew that the nation just needed to get out of the funk it had been in for the past decade, and that the best way to do that would be the way that God does it—forgive and forget. So, with the words “Our long national nightmare is finally over,” it was. And that is such a good feeling.

I have more to write about, but I don’t have a good transition, so I’ll leave with the traditional quote and write more in another post.

"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun."
-Detective Philip Marlowe