On erring
To err is human, Alexander Pope famously said in his Essay on Criticism. Yes, it certainly is. And the more experience I have with this being human business, the more evidence I am afforded of this unpleasant truth.
The season of Lent is about self-examination and repentance, so I decided to grit my teeth and take a bit of an erring inventory this morning. My particular erring seems to happen on a number of levels. I make dumb, relatively harmless mistakes pretty much constantly. I forget things, I lose stuff, I respond obtusely to people, I fail to pay adequate attention. This kind of erring can mostly be chalked up to having limited space in the hard drive, I suppose. Or at least I can convince myself of this.
But there are more serious kinds of erring. I leave undone those things which I ought to have done; and I do those things which I ought not to have done, to borrow the words of the prayer book. I do right things for wrong reasons and wrong things for right reasons. I speak poorly of people and dress it up as righteousness. I selfishly crave attention and mask it as humility. I let people down. My compassion runs out. I am impatient and acquisitive. I am unable to be and to do all the things that people need me to be and to do.
