Forgiveness: The Great Yes

Forgiveness: The Great Yes
(c) Jill Ann Terwilliger 2007

It started this way. Her father – an American Rabbi on vacation in Israel in 1986– was shot in the head by a Palestinian terrorist while on his way home from praying at the Western Wall. It was the beginning of a new wave of Israeli /Palestinian violence. Within a month three other tourists were also shot, all four incidents planned and carried out by the Abu Massa gang. 12 years later, Laura Blumenfeld, newly married and a successful journalist, went to Israel to find her father’s assailant. She wanted revenge.

The story takes on a different tone, a different magnitude, and even sounds a bit overwrought, when you learn that Laura’s father, the Rabbi David Blumenfeld, was not killed in the attack; that, in fact, he was barely injured. The bullet grazed his scalp, it bled, it formed a scar, but there was no lasting physical damage. In fact, Laura seems to be the only one in the family carrying the lasting effects of the shooting. Her older brother hardly thinks about it, and even at the time, his biggest hope was that Mommy would stop the divorce proceedings and take Daddy back. Mom, for her part, gave her husband a call at the hospital to see if he was OK and proceeded with the divorce. But Laura, in college at the time and taking a poetry writing seminar, wrote a poem vowing to avenge the attack. She never forgot her promise, and a decade later she went to Israel to fulfill it.

Revenge. Nearly every culture, every religion , has a teaching or tradition, written or unwritten rules, about getting even with those who’ve hurt you, of settling a blood debt, of defending honor, of finding justice, and restitution for harm.

The Bible says “an eye for an eye” doesn’t it? Sure, the modern scholarly explanation says that at the time of writing, to say ‘an eye for an eye’ was actually a restraint on retaliation that tended at that time and in that culture, to something more like “a life for an eye.” But it still says, yes, taking an eye for an eye is within the scope of acceptable responses to harm.

AT THE SAME TIME, the Bible, and every other culture and religion, every teaching and tradition, has written and unwritten rules about forgiveness as well; about letting go of past harm, of refraining from retaliation, of reconciling what at first seems un-reconcilable. It is this – the practice of forgiveness – that is our subject this morning.

“Forgiveness” writes Christina Baldwin, author of Life’s Companion, a book about writing the spiritual journey,
“forgiveness is the act of admitting we are like other people. We are prone to make mistakes that cause confusion, inflict pain, and miss-communicate our intensions. We are the recipients of these human errors and the perpetrators. There is no way we can avoid hurting others or being hurt by others, because this is exactly the nature of our imperfection” (Life’s Companion, p. 195).

My own list of things I’d wish to be forgiven for is astonishingly long. I can summarize by saying I have not always been the daughter/ sister/ spouse/ mother/ friend/ minister/ advocate/ witness/ ally/ citizen of Earth I could have been. I have fallen short, missed the mark, sinned, sometimes actively caused harmed. I am in need of forgiveness from those I have harmed and – no less – from my own harsh self-judgment and shame.

Similarly, I have a reasonably long list of those against whom I harbor some level of resentment, who have harmed me in some way and whom I need to forgive. The hurts vary in size, significance and intensity, and the quantity is heavy - the quality of both these lists is heavy – until I recall Baldwin’s words – forgiveness is the act of admitting we are like other people – and realize that perhaps you, too, are like me, and that part of the nature of being human is that we make mistakes – large and small – and need to learn the art of forgiveness.

Another definition, this one from A Course in Miracles teaches: forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having a better past.

It sort of shakes me out of the dullness that familiarity with an idea can produce. Forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having a better past. Put that way, I see that of course my past is never going to be any better than it was, any different than it was! How could it be? It’s the past. It is written. It can never be anything other than what it is. And yet I know, from my very own experience, that forgiving is not easy nor obvious. It is slow, hard, painful. It requires enormous courage. Not many of us are lucky enough to have carpenters who build bridges for us when we’ve told them to make the fence high. But the price of NOT forgiving is steeper still.

When you will not forgive someone, writes Christine Baldwin, you fill your life with resentment, paranoia, isolation, righteous indignation, vindictiveness, and false assurance that your perceptions and actions are justified because of the wrong that has been done you. You withhold yourself from human community because you perceive, or at least hope, you are not as imperfect as the rest of us and you don’t want to associate too closely with our unforgivable flaws.

When you are unforgiven, your life is filled with recrimination, self-abuse, isolation, fear of further accusation, shame that you have done something considered unforgivable. You withhold yourself from human community because you perceive, or are afraid, that you are more imperfect than the rest of us and that you can never make enough amends to be a fully acceptable member of the human family again.

What results from either of these tracks are two crippled human beings, two crippling experiences, and two states of isolation from the spiritual journey. Both parties are in hell, and the only way out is for reconciliation to occur.

Perhaps you’ve decided you want to get out of this hell. How do you do it?

“Forgive and forget” someone may have suggested to you, “let bygones be bygones.” If you’ve tried to apply it in your life you may be among those many who have discovered it is distinctly unsatisfying, even downright insulting. To “forgive and forget” a grievous wrong, a significant hurt, a murder, even, can feel as though in some way you are condoning the assault, saying “it’s OK, it doesn’t matter that much,” or pretending the past simply didn’t happen.

Perhaps nothing has revealed the lie of “forgive and forget” to the world more than the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke in Kalamazoo this past August. On the subject of forgiving and forgetting, he said: Bygones never become bygones. They return to haunt you unless you acknowledge them. A [blanket] amnesty is like amnesia. It’s like saying it didn’t happen. Acknowledging that ‘something happened,’ that the harm you experienced is real, is a prerequisite to forgiveness.

Father Thomas Hopko, an Orthodox priest who says “forgiveness is the great yes,” says that acknowledging the harm and pain is actually the hardest part of forgiveness for many people.
Just because you know with your head that someone has offended you, that you ought to forgive them – that’s not forgiveness. But how do you achieve the actual reconciliation where you are really at peace with the other? One must experience in full the pain of the actual harm that was done. That’s the hardest part of forgiveness. That’s the block for most people. It has to be gone through again and again, layer after layer has to come up. (Hopko quotes from Parabola, vol 12, #3)

In South Africa it worked like this: Those who knew they were guilty – who enforced the laws of Apartheid, who inflicted pain and violence upon others – would come forward and apply for official amnesty. Their victims had to- for at least a time – give up applying for damage through the legal system. In return, they would have an opportunity to tell their stories. Not just to remember them themselves, but tell the story in public, to family and friend, to the world at large, and also, to their perpetrator. Archbishop Tutu told us that one young man who had been blinded and who was able to tell his story said at the end: You have given me back my eyes. In the remembering and telling and (especially, I would guess) in the being heard, he saw his personal story of suffering transformed into an element contributing to collective freedom. It allowed him to let go of ever having a different past.

There are different ways to hold memory, though. If one hangs on to the memory without going through that hard and long process of forgiveness, it can become the source of new harm, over and over again. Blood feuds can continue for generations. Suspicion and hatred can be passed from parent to child through cherished family stories. A personal injury can be depersonalized and globalized and applied to a whole class of people you may have never met.

Laura Blumenfeld was not injured at all when her father was shot. And her father was hardly wounded either. But Laura hung onto that memory. She clung to it. She lived with it daily. She went on with her life – earned degrees, started a career, married – but it was still there, her promise to get revenge for something the rest of the family had put aside.

Laura’s friend Rachel challenged Laura often, in the way only really good and trusted friends can. Once she asked Laura (dialogue from p. 123): Are you angry at the people for attacking your father, or that terrorists who hurt people exist in general?
Both. Laura replied. And not only that. I wanted them to know … I wanted them to know …
That they can’t shoot your dad?
No, not that. That you can’t, you can’t [mess] with the Blumenfelds. That there’s someone you’re going to have to answer to, and I know it’s ridiculous that the someone is me.

And right there she touches something so raw, so primal, so ancient in our human psyche: don’t mess with me or my clan. If you do, I’m gonna get you right back. I’m going to show you I’m strong, I’m powerful, I’m a force you can’t just brush aside, I’m going to get revenge.

Rachel, the good and challenging friend, then took it to another level: I think on some level your anger is because you can [mess] with the Blumenfelds. That anyone who lives by the rules of civilization is vulnerable to people like that.

I haven’t had any big revenge fantasies that I can recall. But I know that in those places I still hold a lot of anger, the places where remembering can still make anxiety rise from my stomach to my heart to my throat, the places I’m working hard on forgiveness – what’s in those places is a need to defend my own honor or that of someone I love. I haven’t taken it to the point of revenge, but I haven’t released it either. I am holding ever so tightly to my own righteousness. To let it go would be like saying: as a matter of fact, you can mess with me.

Here Father Hopko offers wise words again:
Many times when forgiveness is needed, one of the hardest things is to face the fact that the way I handled being harmed wasn’t always the best, that I have a certain responsibility for allowing myself to have been harmed. One does have to admit, very often, that there were choices for one as well. There’s always some form of symbiosis at work.

An old Middle Eastern proverb reminds: “If you seek revenge, then dig two graves: one for your enemy, the other for yourself.” You don’t have to be the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s or the Israelis and Palestinians for this to apply to you.

You have to decide: writes Baldwin, Are you going on a journey to see what love can accomplish, or are you going on a journey to see what revenge, blame, and hostility can accomplish? (Life’s Companion, p. 197).

In the end, Laura Blumenfeld’s journey turned into one of love. With her journalist hat on and her husband’s last name for disguise, she sought out the shooter – Omar Katib - and his family. Omar was in jail serving a 25 year sentence for shooting her father. Laura began writing him letters in prison that his family would smuggle to him and he would write back – his letters smuggled out again. Laura wanted to get Omar to say he was sorry for what he’d done – and – she wanted to understand him better so she would know how to get revenge. Each letter she sent meant a long visit with his family, fulfilling the middle-eastern obligations of hospitality, and also, learning who they were and how they saw the world. She received, in return, letters of predictable ideology, poetic imagery, increasing self revelation over time, and hints at transformation (or of skillful manipulation, it was hard to tell which). After more than a year of knowing Omar and the Katib family, and of still not revealing her own identity as the victim’s daughter, Laura attended a medical release hearing for Omar and dramatically told the court who she was. Finally, they approached each other as human beings with stories and families, with beauties and flaws, and Omar expressed remorse and apology, and Laura forgave. This, it turns out, is what love can accomplish.

Which sounds like the climax of the story. But the real climax – it seems to me - came just a day before that hearing, when Laura told her mother what she had been doing for the last year – she’d kept it secret from her all this time – and her mother said, but Laura, dear, don’t you see. It’s me that you’re angry with. It’s me, for calling your father once in the hospital but not running to his side. It’s me, because I hurt your father more with that action than the shooter did with his bullet. The pain that came with that knowledge, the pain of going over all the pieces of the incident and facing each of them, dismissing none, acknowledging the pain was the key to unlocking forgiveness. With that, Laura understood that yes, she wanted the shooter to know you can’t mess with the Blumenfelds, but also, she had needed to hear from her mother: no, I never meant to hurt your father. It had been crippling her, the unforgiveness. It was the stories – layers and layers of them – that built a bridge.

Forgiveness is the great ‘yes.’ It is a decision in the sense that you have to will it. You have to choose life. A person can choose death by not forgiving. So there is a sense in which you can destroy yourself by not saying ‘yes’ to the reality that actually exists. That’s the choice, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to what truly exists.
May it be so.
May we make it so through our living.