Forgive

I must plead your forgiveness. I have fallen from grace.

Currently, there are over 50 million views of an illicitly recorded video of me kissing Nathan Rifkin, who was literally and professionally the Devil’s advocate as Director of Communications for ScarySmart.

Praise the Lord that I am reaching a new audience, if only as witness to my shame.

I am sorry. I have fallen. For consorting with the enemy, and for the sin of lust, I beg your mercy, and your forgiveness.

Confronted with the video of that kiss in my room at the Milwaukee Marriot I thought: this is my undoing, my fatal mistake. But now I realize, it wasn’t fatal. It was fated.

We kissed. You can see on the video, we were both shocked by it. The kiss was more innocent than I think either of us intended. We pulled back, with instinctive wisdom, like opposing polarities. Yet, in that brief kiss, a bond of trust was formed.

That trust is why Mr. Rifkin contacted me, sounding the warning that saved untold lives and woke us up to a world-shaking crisis.

As I beg your forgiveness, humbled by my own sin, I beg you show mercy to the hundreds of thousands of other people similarly victimized by illicitly recorded videos of their sinful behavior.

I say to my fellow sinners, we can’t erase these videos, they belong to the internet now. But we can erase our shame by fully owning our frailties, and begging forgiveness.

I beg, in turn, that you look upon the sins of your neighbor, your friend, your relative, your President, with forgiveness and love.

Alexander Pope wrote, “To err is human, to forgive is Divine.” As humans, we will make mistakes – but we come closer to God by forgiving.

And we want to be very close to God right now.

Dear God, I am a sinner. I have fallen. I beseech you Lord, lift me up.

I beg you listeners, lift me up.

Let us all lift each other up with forgiveness.

We do not need to share every belief. Mr. Rifkin and I remain vigorously opposed on many issues. Family, friends, lovers will always have disagreements. At this very moment, people of good faith adamantly disagree what is happening and why it is happening.

Agreement isn’t necessary. Forgiveness is.

Looking at each other with forgiveness, we see beyond our disagreements, beneath our divisions and we see shared, sacred and solid common ground:

Together, we choose love over hate, life over death. And God is on our side, because, in this, we are all on the same side.

I close with this Prayer for World Peace submitted by Terry Sue Kang of Tallahassee, Florida:

“Dear God, Let us turn from the dark visions around us and turn to each other to find the True, Heavenly and Everlasting Love that unites us.”