(photo by Tom Delaney, Sherburne County, Minnesota, 2025)
One thing that you start seeing in the woods around the oak savanna this time of year is a noticeable addition of mushrooms. This trend starts in late summer and will have a crescendo in the fall. These mushrooms caught my eye as I was walking through the pines a few days ago. As I hope you can see inn the photo, they are remarkable in their cup-like funnel shape — like little tan goblets. I am not a good mushroom hunter or mycologist by a long shot, but I think I have reasonably figured them to be young growth of the Common Funnel Cap (Infundibulicybe gibba). If you’re a knowledgeable mushroom hunter or mycologist, let me know if I’m right.
Today’s Liturgy of the Hours for morning (Lauds) includes a very good section of Ezekiel 36 to think about:
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.
Speaking for God, the author is describing God’s intention to transform and renew his people, especially with regard to the state of their hearts, which we can understand as their combined emotional, mental and spiritual vitality. We are meant to understand that this is something God can do, and that God does do. It is what it is to be God.
What is a stony heart? Remember that the heart we are talking about here is לֵב “lev” in Hebrew, is our combined mental, spiritual, and emotional self. When we think of the quality of stones, we think of how they are impenetrable, stuck in whatever place they are in, not responsive, and not growing and flourishing. Let me say here that I’ve got nothing against stones, that they are super important for a lot of things just as they with those qualities, and in fact geological science can demonstrate that there’s a lot going on with any stone. Their age is respectable, and the Dakota people who lived on this land still use the name Inyan to recognize the age, wisdom and spiritual place of significance in the vast interrelationship of all things. But when we think about the healthy state of our “heart,” it certainly is not associated with qualities of the stone that I listed.
Can our hearts actually be like stone? Most often we think of anger in terms of “fire” for its quick and intense energy as a reaction that can even be explosive like fire. An anger that we keep in our hearts over time might not be a fire anymore, but what we might still call it “smoldering” because it is there in us, not leapt up in flames, but still putting off some heat and smoke and could easily be stoked back into a flame. But over the real long term, anger can turn to deep-seated resentment, and makes us “hard.” If we don’t process our feelings of anger in healthy ways, and instead choose to regard certain people or events with a permanent anger, we get stuck. So there we are, hard, stuck, not really engaging in life fully because we have a preoccupation with resentment, and not really growing and flourishing ourselves. Sound familiar?
Forgiveness researcher Robert Enright identified some of the most common possible causes for resentment over time:
- Series of Small Offenses: Our first thought might be that resentment is caused by big hurtful events, but we know that resentment doesn’t require big events to happen. Repeated small hurts can cause resentment equally as unhealthy.
- Unhealed Childhood Trauma: Traumatic events in childhood that are unresolved can be carried into adulthood, and in fact often are. As adults, experiences that resemble the childhood trauma can reactivate the defense systems that were developed in response to the original traumatic event, and are more often than not self-destructive in their effect. Benedictine author Thomas Keating identified childhood struggles, hurts, and trauma as significant things that can also have an influence, if not a lot of impact, on our spiritual growth and development. Seeking a deeper spirituality and relationship with God often requires tackling unresolved issues from childhood.
Enright recognized that short-term anger can be a healthy response to a hurtful event, giving us the energy and motivation we need to get ourselves out of that situation and avoid getting into it again. After that, Enright observed that “if your anger hasn’t passed away in a reasonable amount of time or if weeks, months, or years after the harmful event you are still ruminating over the injury, plotting revenge, or feeling the same level of pain…you are a prime candidate for choosing the forgiveness process” (Forgiveness is a Choice, pp. 49-50). Maybe that’s a silver lining. You can feel pretty bad about your life and all the day-to-day resentment you have packed into it, but the good news is that you are a prime candidate! Who gets to say that?!! … You do! It’s classic Good News!
Enright explains that the forgiveness process is designed to help you deal with anger that has some or all of these characteristics:
- anger that is directed toward a person or other people, not to “fate,” circumstances, or inanimate objects
- anger that is caused by a real injustice
- anger that has become a pattern that is not easily broken
- anger that causes you to engage in self-destructive behaviors
- anger that affects your health and well-being
The quote from Ezekiel is more good news! The new heart that God wants to give us is a natural heart. It’s the heart we are born to have. It’s the heart that is already in us just waiting to take its place in the center of our lives. To be human is to have this natural heart! The REACH Forgiveness Process that is presented in Live and Forgive educational events is a good way to begin some self-awareness and self-inquiry so as to find the places within us where resentment has taken some of the life out of us, and to also start finding our natural hearts. The REACH Forgiveness Process is a research-validated way to use forgiveness as a way to clear out resentment and restore health and vitality to our emotional, mental and spiritual heart, the way it was meant to be. The transformation can happen, and it will change your life forever. That’s a wonderful experience to give yourself, and you will be giving it to people around you in how they experience you. Never underestimate the ripple effects. Even the smallest grain of sand makes ripples when it is dropped into even the biggest waters.
This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com—Tom will be glad to connect with you in a spirit of welcome, respect, and shared faith.
Live and Forgive 