"Hot water bleeding our colors"

A long week on the road. I've been too tired to post anything. I did make a trip to a local bookstore where I've been staying this week. I found a little book by a philosopher I haven't seriously engaged for a number of years, the late Jacques Derrida. The book is Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. It is an interesting book, containing two of Derrida's essays, to begin as I finish Schlingensiepen's biography of Bonhoeffer.

Derrida began his essay "On Forgiveness" by noting something that should be obvious, but is not: "In principle, there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no 'to what point?'"

As a Christian, this puts me in mind of an episode in the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel: "Then Peter approaching asked him, 'Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus answered, 'I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times'" (Matt. 18:21-22). The number seven appears in the Bible around six hundred time. It is a number that means fullness, completeness,and/or totality. In Hebrew, the word meaning seven is derived from the Hebrew word that means “to be full,” "to be satisfied," and "to have enough." Derrida's beginning also reminded of Brian Zahnd's amazing book Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness.

Our traditio this week is Cold War Kids' song "Hang Me Out to Dry."

Careless in our summer clothes, splashing around in the muck and the mire