Kiss the Toad

Forgiveness is a word we hear often during Lent. We are asked to think about our need for it, our responsibility to give it, and our stubborn resistance to doing either one. Forgiveness is an act of love. When given and received, it changes the giver and the receiver--except when the giver is God, who is unswerving forgiveness because God is unwavering love.

The other day someone quoted St. Augustine: "Love your enemies so that they may become your friends." Loving one's enemies--surely the most difficult of the Gospel commandments--is, of course, an expression of forgiveness. As St. Augustine suggests, it may make a surprising difference, either in our perception of our enemies or their perception of us.

I'm reminded of the fairy tale about the young woman who kisses a frog. The frog then turns into a handsome prince. And I'm sure they live happily ever after. It was a questionable tale. It belonged to the repertoire that convinced girls my age that we were all destined to find the prince and live happily ever after, apparently with no effort at all once little obstacles like frogginess were dissipated by true love. Moreover, true love required no effort after the dreamed-of day of white lace and promises. One little kiss, and bingo! You had your prince for life. The story also taught us that no matter what sort of ugliness of character our chosen prince exhibited, we could change him with as little effort as that heroine exhibited. You could safely marry the frog, even though your parents and friends thought you were crazy, because all you had to do was find the magic talisman, and again--bingo! The prince. A lot of grief has come of that story.

Nevertheless, the story has some truth to it. It was meant to teach us not to judge anyone by appearances. Even a frog could be a prince in disguise. It was meant to teach us to take risks to find the prince in the frog, to recognize the goodness under the skin of the toad. (If you are puzzled about the difference between a frog and a toad, just consult the article on "toad" in Wikipedia, which will leave you even more confused but will allow you to use the two words more or less interchangeably, as I am doing here.)

St. Augustine seems to have had the same notion in mind, though I doubt he ever heard the fairy tale. "Love your enemies that they may become your friends." Many of us may have people with whom we are at odds, but not real enemies of the "out-to-get-you" kind. But all of us have enemies within, the traits that make up our worst selves. In either case, we are apt to find those enemies ugly, unwanted, unkissable--in fact, toads. Moreover, we are apt to assume they are incapable of change.

However, St. Augustine believed otherwise. We can indeed love not only the people with whom we are in opposition but also those very parts of our own selves that seem to trip us up at every turn. Many of our most unlovely ways of seeing and doing things are misdirected gifts. (It's not a toad but a snake that does that kind of misdirecting.) If we spend some time with them, looking for the prince or princess under the skin, we may discover that they have some surprising good to offer us or others. Our inability to say no may simply be generosity in need of a little humble realism about limits of time and energy. Our tendency to be late may be a capacity to be radically committed to the people or task at hand, a capacity in need of a well-timed alarm. You can make your own list. Once we forgive them, discover their hidden possibilities, make peace with them as parts of our selves beloved by God but also sometimes in need of reformation by God, we may not turn into perfect people overnight, but we will certainly become more peaceful people, better able to assess our faults and perhaps to come up with creative strategies to turn them into friends.

Kiss the toad. You never know.

©2009 Abbey of St. Walburga