Ending the debt between parent and child ended the relationship.  As if indebtedness was what held the relationship together.  As if the kinds of debts we can never repay are what hold the world together.  To be in good debt means that our lives are so dependent on past generations, the abundance of the natural world, the goodwill of others, that the only reasonable way to live is, as Paul writes, to “let no debt remain outstanding, except – except – the continuing debt to love another.”

One of the gifts of a Sabbatical is being temporarily released from loving the world in the particular way one has otherwise committed to.  An immediate effect is being freed up to love parts of the world one may not get around to loving were the rush of life to just keep rushing.

“Love is the committed presence and practice that ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:14), the fruit filling that makes everything a bit more delicious. Love, at the very least—or perhaps the very most—keeps us together.”

We, in pursuit of self-control come face to face with our human nature, in all its bushy beauty and challenge. As humans, we seem to have endless propensity for shame and guilt, to perceive ourselves as failing over and over and over again, flailing in our morose of never being enough. I follow the pathetic little ritual of compromising myself, with food or sexuality, resentment, anger, prejudice. The inability to control oneself, by oneself, shows up in commonly experienced arenas: our thoughts and our tongues – our words about ourselves and others, substance use and abuse, lust, anger, how we do or don’t use our time or our phones, guilt of whether we’re being good, peace-filled, productive Mennonites