I have found that inspiration comes from the most unexpected places.  But that’s the amazing thing about inspiration—one needs to be always open, always listening and always thinking.

Today is a national holiday.  As such, I have spent part of the day watching one of my favorite shows on PBS.  Grantchester is set in the 1950s near Cambridge (England) and follows the story of a vicar and the local inspector as they work together to solve crimes that occur in the parish.  There are a number of back stories that thread the episodes together and one of those deals with the vicar’s own human and personal struggles.

In the midst of one episode, and also in the midst of an existential crisis, the vicar says to himself, “How do I reconcile what I have done with what I believe?”  This is perhaps that deepest question anyone asks of themselves, but particularly so for those who believe they need to measure themselves with a yardstick against which they will always fall short.

The question stuck in my brain and I found myself wondering what the answer to this question could be in the space of a fifty minute drama.  A few minutes later in the episode, while counseling another character dealing with his own moral crisis, the vicar reminds him, “You are a child of God.  He loves you.”  At first, I thought this was the answer to the self-addressed question that had occurred earlier.  But I realized that, while true, this was not the answer that would satisfy the vicar and nor would it satisfy me.

Here is the real answer.  I can’t reconcile what I have done with what I believe.  I am not able.  I can’t even reconcile some of the things I have done with the way a normal, rationale, loving human being should behave.  Reconciliation is defined as the action of making one view or belief compatible with another.  Reconciliation is about restoring relationships between people or between myself and God.  Reconciliation can’t happen between an action and a belief, because I am fallible and will never be able to fully act the way I truly believe.

That doesn’t provide an excuse, or a hall-pass for consistent mistake making.  I can’t focus of bringing together two diametrically opposed things—I can try but I will always fall short.  What I can focus on is repairing relationships with other people when I have acted in a way that doesn’t show love.  I can focus on bringing myself back together to God when my own wants are given the priority. I can focus on the fact that forgiveness based in love is actually more important than reconciliation.  Forgiving others, and learning to forgive myself, is the only way to understand that our fallibility, our doing one thing while believing another, doesn’t turn us away from love.  Our fallibility is the thing that draws us closer to the need for love.