forgiveness

so much to say . . .

Revenge and Forgiveness

I am just back from the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

I thought this was relevant to our discussion (this poem made me cry and cry.):

The Cemetery

. . . They were facing in another direction. The evening sunshine gave them a reddish tinge, and they trembled gently in the breeze. They seemed to be whispering to each other. Were they horrified by the ragged men who were marching past on tired feet? The color of the sunflowers - orange and yellow, gold and brown - danced before my eyes. They grew in fertile brown soil, from carefully tended mounts - behind them, gnarled trees - and above it all, a deep blue sky. . .

My Thoughts on Mary Gordon's response

When I read Edward Flannery’s and Mary Gordon’s respective responses to The Sunflower, I had radically different responses to their thoughts.

I found Flannery’s words to be thoughtful, insightful, and oddly gentle. I found them completely in harmony with my own reading of Wiesenthal’s story. Flannery’s response also contained an element of compassion for Karl, the dying Nazi soldier.

Mary Gordon’s understanding and reaction could not have been more different. Most prominent in her response is her dehumanization of Karl by never referring to him by name. She calls him “the Nazi”. She uses Nazi in place of his name six times, each time rendering the word as a spitting epithet.

Gordon sits in judgment of Karl and refuses any compassion or understanding to enter into her response. I found her understanding of forgiveness to be incomplete. Forgiveness can be freely given at any time but to truly restore a relationship, a change of behavior is required.

She also has, I believe, a total lack of understanding of a priest’s role in the sacrament of absolution; nor do Catholics desire anything more than private contrition. The practice of public penitence exists, to a certain degree in various Catholic cultures but these public displays have their roots in the extant culture it is found in.

The strongest sentiment I felt in Gordon’s response was one of anger, but was it personal anger, righteous anger, indignant anger? I couldn’t tell but I do know that her anger, no matter the source, lead to the awful eye for an eye solution she offered for true atonement. It wasn’t enough for Karl to suffer with loss of friendship, eyesight, and physical capacity. It wasn’t enough for him to have been given time to linger in pain and reflect on his heinous acts. No. Mary Gordon feels that the only appropriate setting for atonement for Karl is for him to suffer in the camps as well.

I cannot agree with her because even in the camps there was a sense of shared community, shared suffering, and opportunities for relationship. By remaining alone, Karl was denied even that. He was totally and completely alone on a human level, left alone with his thoughts. His only companion was God who never abandons anyone.

Gordon’s words suggest she has much to learn of compassion, forgiveness, relationship, and love. She must cast a wider net for deeper understanding otherwise she will remain always at an undeveloped emotion level of understanding. Until the anger is controlled, her emotional warfare will be on-going.

The Sunflower

A small sketch based on the book, The Sunflower. Click on it to see it larger.

Dalai Lama — My Response

A few years back, a Tibetan monk who had served about eighteen years in a Chinese prison in Tibet came to see me after his escape to India. I knew him from my days in Tibet and remember last seeing him in 1959. During the course of that meeting I had asked him what he felt was the bigest threat or danger while he was in prison. I was amazed by his answer. It was extraordinary and inspiring. I was expecting him to say something else; instead he said that what he most feared was losing his compassion for the Chinese.


If I were to lose my compassion for those who have harmed me, then I would continue the cycle of anger and abuse that began long before I was born. I feel the desire to forgive and I feel compassion for those people. I know why they were abusive and angry. There are times when I even feel that I have forgiven these people. So I was heartened to read the passage that I quoted above in The Sunflower because it reaffirmed a conclusion that I had reached independently.

So why is it that I am still experiencing profound sadness and grief about the past? The death of my stepmother, whom I erroneously regarded as a mother, has burdened me with too much pain. What do I need to do to forgive (and I thought I had forgiven because I did not ever consciously feel anger or hate)? Obviously the Dalai Lama has spiritual wisdom that I don't have but I have no background with Buddhism for guidance. So I looked to Christianity, with which I am more familiar, and I read passages that are inspiring and comforting, such as Annie's response to Edward Flannery's response in the previous post. Annie quotes Mary Karen Read, who wrote, “When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.”

I have prayed, sought help and read both the Bible and secular books (including The Sunflower). Forgiveness, and its peace, still evades me. I may have a clue why: I think we can only forgive if we are part of a larger community of compassionate and spiritual people who can lead the way and comfort us.

Now I ask the Dalai Lama, the Buddhists, the Christians and all readers: How do we forgive and find compassion? Is forgiveness such a large task that it requires years of study, reading and meditation? Is it inevitable that we feel that primitive anger before we can forgive? Do Buddhists experience that anger? Wouldn't I be as bad as the abusers if I felt deep anger and hatred?

I need to forgive so that I can recover.

The Sunflower - My Response

God’s power to forgive is limitless. Our own ability to forgive is strengthened by our ability to call upon God for His help in our own efforts to offer forgiveness. Forgiveness does not happen in an instant. Before we can forgive, we must have the desire to forgive.

When Simon Wiesenthal was brought before the dying SS soldier, Karl, Karl told him his story, confessed his crimes, and asked for forgiveness. Wiesenthal had no time to assimilate and respond to this enormous plea. The desire to forgive had no chance to bloom with Wiesenthal. His Jewish theology and the circumstances he found himself in, would not allow for it.

From the moment of his encounter with Karl, Karl’s plea for forgiveness became one of the singular events of his life. He was not able to offer forgiveness to Karl before he died but he was so deeply effected that for the rest of his life he asked others, “What would you have done”? Had he not been so deeply moved, I would not be here, over 60 years later, writing my own thoughts and trying to answer the question that haunted Wiesenthal for the rest of his life. We also would not have had the collective thoughts from generations of readers of his book, The Sunflower, thoughts from classrooms, discussion groups, private reflections and the published responses found in the book along with Simon’s story.

Why is this question so important? The short answer would be simply that forgiveness is freeing for both the giver and the receiver. To forgive frees us from vengeance, bitterness, the sense that we are victims; all feelings that can only corrode the soul.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are welded together in Christian thought. God is all forgiving and merciful and we are called to be as He is. However, to forgive does not mean to be reconciled. Reconciliation is a restoration of the relationship between the victim and the victimizer. Reconciliation suggests that there is a change in the behavior of the victimizer. If there is no change, there can be no reconciliation. So, we can forgive but not be reconciled.

By going through the process of forgiving, we are freed from evil’s power over us. Thus, with forgiveness offered, we are able to go forward in our lives. The lessons of evil have the power to teach the world that there is a better way. Forgiveness becomes a tool of God’s hand that takes evil and makes it an instrument of good. St. Augustine wrote, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to allow no evil to exist.”

We have many modern day examples of the power of forgiveness becoming a tool for good. Mary Karen Read is one of the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. After her death, at age 18, notes on forgiveness were found in her private journal. Two months before her death, she wrote, “When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.”

Remarkably, this was just one of a series of quotes on forgiveness that Mary had been collecting since her mid-teens. The notebook, now used by Mary's father to help others, shows most profoundly the healing and comfort that can be found in forgiveness. It has become God’s tool for bringing good out of evil and showing the way out of pain and sadness.

Holocaust survivors remind us that if you have not been through it, you cannot understand the depth of the pain. Mary’s family echoes this same feeling. On a very small scale that can in no way be equated with Wiesenthal’s experience or the Read family’s loss, I found myself being called for years to forgive an individual who was instrumental in causing great havoc and wreckage in my life.

Until I could forgive, I could not free myself of the fears and insecurities that had settled around my heart and mind. But with forgiveness came the sensation of shedding the anger, hurt, bitterness and fear that was physically felt as it flow from my body through my fingertips and feet. The power of those past evil acts literally flowed out of me leaving a cleansed space from which I could start again and grow in personal strength. Forgiveness became not only a spiritual and mental experience, but also a physical experience.

Wiesenthal may not have given Karl what he was asking for but through thought and action, I believe that he was clearly moved in the direction of forgiveness. There simply was not enough time for Karl to show by his actions that he was truly remorseful and changed. But in those shared hours, Simon and Karl became God’s tool for good to emerge from great evil. And what of Karl’s plea for forgiveness? Simon, by hearing his plea, was led on a lifelong quest regarding God’s expectations of us. Karl, as an instrument of evil, was given a penance commensurate with his crime. He suffered tremendously. His suffering was not just physical. He suffered in conscience. He suffered the loss of the one thing that would have given him comfort and consolation: the nearness of his beloved mother.

But even here I see the hand of God at work. By not having the comfort of his mother, he was left truly alone with his thoughts. We cannot judge the quality and value of Karl’s remorse. We can only know that by his punishment he was led to reflect on his actions, arrive at deep remorse and then beg for forgiveness.

The object of his quest , a Jew, should not be judged either. He had nothing else to lose. His life was at an end. His confession and expression of remorse was true remorse. He did not spare himself. He did not excuse him. He did not explain himself. He accepted the grace that comes from accepting the knowledge of his crimes.

As I read Edward Flannery’s conclusion in his own response to Wiesenthal question, “What would I do?”, I could not help but identify completely with his words. I take Flannery’s words here now and embrace them wholly as my own.

“ . . .I would have – I do hope – forgiven him and, as an obstinate believer, suggested to him that he make his peace with God by asking for His forgiveness, and, taking full advantage of the situation, uttered a prayer for the repose of his soul and those of the victims of his inhuman behavior."

'The Sunflower': an Introduction

The Sunflower

Summoned to the bedside of a dying Nazi who had willingly participated in the systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews, concentration camp inmate Simon Wiesenthal found himself the captive, solitary witness to this 21-year-old SS man's confession of responsibility for committing acts of unspeakable cruelty.

Kurt had asked a nurse to bring him a Jew (any Jew would do); quite by chance the nurse selected Wiesenthal from the work detail assigned to the hospital that day. Against his will, he listened to this man recount his experience of packing a house full of Jewish men, women, and children and then setting the house on fire while lobbing grenades into the inferno and shooting at anyone who had attempted to escape this hell. Kurt watched a father, mother, and small boy leap from a window to their certain death. Before the leap, the father had shielded the child's eyes.

The image haunted Kurt, who was unable to fight again. Instead, he froze on the battlefield and suffered and injury that first cost him his sight and then took his life. Before he died, though, he wanted to confess his sins to a Jew that he might be forgiven and die in peace.

Wiesenthal, who was about the same age as this soldier, heard him out but refused to forgive. Instead, he offered silence in response to the story and returned to the concentration camp.

The experience haunted Wiesenthal; soon after it happened, he discussed it with his friends back at the camp, with a Polish Catholic seminarian. Much later, he presented the story to theologians, political leaders, Holocaust survivors, and victims of other attempted genocides and asked each of these persons what he or she would have done in the same situation.

The Symposium

The story itself is first book of The Sunflower; the responses to the question, "The Symposium," are the text of the second book in this volume. Broadly grouped, the respondents are Jews and Christians, primarily. There are two Buddhist respondents and one Chinese respondent who makes no reference to religion though his response is in keeping with Buddhist thinking. Within these broad categories respondents reflect on different facets of the experience Wiesenthal describes and facets of their faith and life experiences and knowledge to make a response.

The Jewish respondents point to the fact that only the person against whom a sin has been committed has the right to forgive the sinner. Therefore, Kurt cannot be forgiven; his victims are dead. The Christian respondents point out, first, that they feel they have no right to address the question because they have never been on the receiving end of genocide. Then they point out that God alone can forgive and that it is incumbent on each of us sinners to find forgiveness in our hearts for others. The Buddhists respond, as Buddhists do, in the present tense and with an eye on enlightenment--a release from suffering. Each perspective reflects a different concept of individuality and therefore of the nature of accountability.

The Invitation

For this reader, The Sunflower accomplishes the important task of bringing the reader into the concentration camp alongside one of its victims, into the hospital room of the dying SS man, and into the heart of the questions the Holocaust raises about responsibility, accountability, forgiveness, restitution, and grace. These are questions that refuse pat answers and therefore remain alive and active in our minds. Wiesenthal's book challenges our ability to empathize with those who suffer and our ability to think about how and why we believe what we do about ourselves and each other. It is a humble and beautiful tribute to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. We too can honor their memory by participating in the conversation this book presents.

a little note about sunflowers

I love the symbolism of the sunflower. The sunflower follows the sun, the sun is the giver of growth, warmth and energy, and symbolic of God. The flower follows the sun, the roots reach into the ground and touch the earth, the water, the minerals, the person who has died. The plant connects earth and sky, the dead and the heavens, the human and God. Its radiance represents love and forgiveness. A marvelous symbol.

(photo by me, mary taitt)

The twelve steps and forgiveness

I just wanted to mention that the very effective twelve step programs
that helps so many alcoholics, gamblers, drug users and overeaters
deals more with forgiveness than any other issue.

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over
alcohol/drugs/food/gambling/other people(etc)—that our lives had
become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to
do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of
His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we
tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.

4-10 have to do with forgiveness, more than half, as does step 12,
which is to continue working the steps above. Being "restored to
sanity," has in large part to do with giving and receiving
forgiveness. (And of course, confession is such a large part of the
Catholic Church.)

(photo by me, mary taitt)

Sunflower, first section

I have finished reading The Sunflower, just the first section of the book with Simon Wiesenthal's story. I cried a lot. Strangely, perhaps, I did not cry at all during most of the early book. I cried when he began to truly struggle with his memories and with forgiveness. I cried hard and loud and luckily was alone.

I also read one of the responses, the one from the Dali Lama. I have to say I found it a bit alarmingly pat, annoyingly so. I guess there was so much soul searching going on by Simon that I felt a pat-seeming answer was inappropriate. Somehow disrespectful. (I often feel that way when leaving comments on people's blogs who have exposed their souls, and I can only say, now now, don't worry, everything will be fine.)

But nothing will be fine, or, everything will be fine in the sense only that there is some perfection in imperfection.

I have struggled all my life with issues of forgiveness, but this book brings up larger issues than the ones I have previously deeply considered.

Are there unforgivable sins or wrongs?

Does anyone have the right to forgive on behalf of someone else or a group?

Are there times when forgiveness is actually wrong?

I always thought that forgiveness was always right, but that it was
just terribly hard to do in some cases.

I heard on NPR recently about a case where the parents of a girl who
was murdered somewhere in Africa has helped the murderer and now
consider him like a son.

I have a hard time imagining myself able to do something like that, or
even that it was the right thing to do. I was very upset and confused
when I heard the story.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Clearly, we are not to take
revenge against others. And for Christians, Jesus died on the cross
so that our sins would be forgiven.

Which brings me to another personal story. This is a sort of weird
story and one that some people have reacted badly to, so I am a little
afraid to tell it, but I guess I will, since I seem to feel compelled
to do so.

First, a little background. My father was an atheist. He was raised
Catholic, but did not believe on God. My mother was an agnostic and
talked more and more about God, or the possibility of God, as she
aged. (This annoyed some of the other atheists in our family.) We
lived in a small community, and my parents liked to sing, and the only
opportunity for singing there was the church choir. We went to church
and my parents sang in the choir and we went to Sunday School.

When I was in high school, I was baptized and confirmed in the
Presbyterian Church. A few years later, I repudiated the Church and
God and became an atheist/agnostic. Confused, basically. I remain
confused, lo these many years later. I am of two minds, a scientific
mind that says life ends when we die, period, and a hopeful, questing
mind that seeks belief. I have tried many forms of religion over the
years and have been unsatisfied with each and all of them.

Maybe about ten years ago, or so, I was sitting in the little park in
front of the museum where I worked. It was evening, and I had had to
work late. I was alone, having my dinner break before returning to
work. I had been reading. The park and streets were full of people,
a small band was playing nearby. I stopped reading, looked around,
and closed my eyes briefly.

I was not asleep. I could hear a man talking on the phone (a pay
phone near me--this was before cell phones were so prevalent). I
could hear people talking on the other side of me, and people coming
and going.

Suddenly, Jesus was standing in front of me. I was not entirely
pleased and said something to him that would sound sarcastic and
disrespectful to a true believer, but I was not a true believer. I
said, "What are you doing here?" He smiled. He communicated to me
directly in my mind, like a conversation, only silent. He gave me to
know that he had been out on the desert fasting, praying and
meditating. That seemed appropriate to me, as I did a lot of that
myself. A connection, or sorts. Grains of sand clung to his skin. I
could see every hair and pore on his skin. He was deeply tanned and
nearly naked. He told me, very clearly, more than once, that I was
his, that I belonged to him, forever. That I was forgiven, now and
forever.

I think of that moment, sometimes, when I feel unloved and unworthy.
When I feel that I have done something bad, something unforgivable, I
remember that I am forgiven. At least by him.

Other times, I dismiss it as a hyopnogogic/dream or wishful thinking.
But I was fully awake and had not been wishing (consciously) for Jesus
and was not even pleased to see him! I did not consider myself to be
a Christian.

I still do not believe in God, not entirely, anyway. I do not attend
church and do not consider myself to be a Christian, exactly. But I
continue to find solace in the notion of my being forgiven.
Continuously, forever.

I have not succeeded in forgiving myself or other people I need to
forgive, with some exceptions, and I have not asked for forgiveness
from all the people whom I have wronged. I believe this is important
work and that I need to do it. Being forgiven by Jesus that night
does not excuse me from doing the important work of forgiving and
asking forgiveness. But it gives me a sense of peace and courage,
sometimes, when facing traumatic forgiveness issues in my life.

As an abuse survivor and very human and flawed person, I have lots of
personal forgiveness issues both in giving and receiving forgiveness.
But I have had little intimate experience, thank God, with the horrors
of genocide, war, and so on that Simon speaks of, or the incredibly
difficult choice he was given. I cannot answer what I might do, at
this point, or what even is right. I have to start all over to
consider these questions.

I keep wanting to believe that forgiveness is always right. But
torture? Murder? Rape? Inflicted terrible sufferings to total
innocents--children, the aged? If you forgive the perpetrator, what
about the victim?

The Dali Lama urges forgiveness and compassion. I want to agree with
him. Jesus said, love thine enemies. He didn't mean hug them and kiss them or have sex with them.

What did he mean? He meant compassion, forgiveness, understanding.

When someone hurts me, it takes me a while to reach the point of being
able to forgive--even small injuries.

Simon was still being hurt, and was in imminent danger. He was living
in fear and numbness. It's much easier to forgive from a distance,
much harder to forgive while immersed in pain. Closer to home, should
a woman who is in an ongoing abusive relationship forgive her husband
who is still beating her? As he is kicking her, should she forgive
him?

The Bible says, turn the other cheek. But that is easier said than
done, and may not be safe for the woman in question. I knew a woman
who was a very nice sweet lovable, kind woman, and very forgiving.
She kept forgiving her husband for striking her. Over and over, she
forgave him. He killed her. Killed her dead. Now she is gone.
Confusing.

I still think forgiveness is the right thing to do--but get safe
first, if possible.

I think I am rambling here. I think personal forgiveness is right.
It's what I believe in.

Forgiving for a group in a situation like Simon describes, that's a
little harder. No, it's a LOT harder. I still think I believe in
forgiveness. But could I do it, in that situation? Probably not.

Here's what I think. Each person is an individual. One cannot hold
the SS guy (Karl) responsible for all the sins and wrongs and horrors
of all the SS. Only for what he personally has done, and then you
have to look at the extenuating circumstances. You have to be able to
walk a mile in his shoes. We can't do that well. That's why the
Bible says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." It's not our job to
judge. We cannot know, truly know, what is in the heart of another.

Can you forgive without making a judgment? Do you have to believe
that the person is "worthy" of being forgiven? Who makes that choice?
Can you forgive without it? I think yes. Personally you can,
anyway. You have to. For yourself.

Who do we forgive for? Ourselves or for others? Or both? I think both.

WOW! I could go on and on and on about this, but I have other things
to do, so I am just going to stop for now.

photo by me, mary taitt

A personal story

I received my book, The Sunflower, On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. I have begun to read it, but life has been busy and I haven't gotten very far yet.

I wanted to share a personal story.

I don't have time to write it all right now. But since I don't know when I will, I will write some of it.

My first husband, let us call him PIUS, used to to beat me. He was physically abusive and hurt me frequently. He was also emotionally and spiritually abusive, controlling and sometimes mean. I used to run away and he would find me and hit me over and over. These words do not begin to tell what terror I lived in. He told me if I left him, he would come and find me and kill me, and I believed him and was afraid to go.

A few years ago, he wrote and asked if I would forgive him.

My first impulse was to say no. How could I forgive what he had done? He not only physically, emotionally and spiritually hurt me, but he affected how I view men, and the relationships I am able to have with them. I am still "damaged" by our marriage and the way he treated me.

I told him I would think about it.

Late I told him I would try to forgive him.

But while I was reading the book, I felt driven to truly forgive him. I wrote and asked him to forgive me for my part in our troubles, wondered if I had already asked, and told him I forgave him.

This is what he said:

"You never asked, No.

"We were young and foolish. I never didn't forgive you and
never held it against you.

"I always felt bad about the things I did. Like stopping you from chanting NamYoHoRengekyo, which I have been doing since 1981. And many other things which were almost unforgivable and took many years to grow out of.

"Thank you and please accept my most sincere apologies for the
hurt, disregard, disrespect and anguish."

I feel a great sadness, I feel tears, and I feel lighter. But this
has been many years in coming. I was 19 then. I am 62 now.

(photo by me, Mary Taitt)

Sand and Stone

"Sand & Stone"

Two friends were walking through the desert. At one point, they had an argument; and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:

"today my best friend slapped me in the face. "

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:

"today my best friend saved my life'

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, 'after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?'

The friend replied 'when someone hurts us, let us write it down in sand, where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, let us engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.'

This is a forward I got, and it has probably been around multiple times, but I thought it might be relevant to our discussion and shed light on attitudes about forgiveness. I hope you don't mind my posting here before the end of June.

(Photo by me [mary taitt].)

{I have to say that the gap between what I believe and my success at practicing it is very wide.}