A person can grow old without really growing wise. Derek Kidner charitably writes,
“While all go to God’s school, few wisdom there…”
While we live in the days of the perpetually infantilizated in a culture of hyper-individualism, Nowlan is able to elegantly and simply articulate the process of maturity.
He captures the wisdom of forgiveness – that the day we can [finally] forgive ourselves is the day we become wise. If you have learned to forgive yourself, you may contemplate the unique curriculum through which God has led you to be freed from the oppressive yoke of self judgement and self loathing – to be free to receive the forgiveness for which Christ lived and died and resurrected, and thus the forgiveness for which you were designed.
But for many, forgiveness is rather an unreachable treasure lost in a labyrinth. It need not be so unattainable, for though the cost of forgiveness is unbearably high, we will inevitably find it always comes as a gift.
Each one learns by way a unique curriculum of wisdom, but Kidner captures the common thread in the complete quote:
“While all go to God’s school, few wisdom there, for the knowledge which He aims to instil is the knowledge of Himself; this is the ultimate prize.”
May you attain the ultimate prize of knowing God, and may you learn to receive forgiveness, be able to forgive yourself and others… and help others do the same.
Alden Nowlan (January 25, 1933 – June 27, 1983) was a Canadian poet and playwright born into rural poverty in Stanley, Nova Scotia, along a stretch of dirt road that he would later refer to as Desolation Creek.
His father, Freeman Nowlan, worked sporadically as a manual labourer. His mother, Grace Reese, was only 14 years of age (!) when Nowlan was born, and she soon left the family, leaving Alden and her younger daughter Harriet to the care of their paternal grandmother. The family discouraged education as a waste of time, and Nowlan left school after only four grades. At the age of 14, he went to work in the village sawmill. At the age of 16, he discovered the new library in Windsor. Often on weekends he would travel eighteen miles to the library to get books, which broadened his already keen reading. “I wrote (as I read) in secret,” Nowlan remembered.
Source: Wikipedia
Recently came upon Mitch Teemley’s post from whence I obtained this image of C.S. Lewis saying something similar and profound about self-forgiveness.
Curriculum of the Spiritual Life 