Mistakes
“There
are no mistakes in life some people say.
It
is true sometimes you can see it that way...”
Bob
Dylan (Man in the Long Black Coat)
Wouldn't
it be nice if this were true? And maybe it is...maybe the things we
do, and in retrospect think of as wrong, are really guideposts along
the way. It is a fact, at least in my life, that mistakes are made. I
say and do things that hurt others, sometimes intentionally, sometimes
out of ignorance. One thing is clear: to live in this world is to
make mistakes. We cannot be human and avoid them.
There
is a myth in Christianity that we come into this world as sinners. I
don't believe that. I think we come into this world as innocent
babies. But we have the capacity to both harm and help, which we
swing between for our whole lives. We are prone to distorted ways of
thinking; ways that are blind to injustice and inequality. We don't
intend to be mean-spirited, we're just headstrong and believe that
our way, whichever way it may be, is just.
Making
mistakes is not a sin. What happens next is what matters. Can we take
the errors we make and use them as mile-markers, as turning points? Can we benefit from
the humility of admitting our misdeeds and misconceptions, of
amending our behavior so that the same blunders don't happen again?
Absolutely. In that way, mistakes become gifts, opportunities for
change and renewal.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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