Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 24,2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our covenant says when we fall short of that to which we aspire, we should forgive ourselves and each other and move on. What is involved in that? How do we begin to forgive ourselves?

I knew a man who had worked for an asphalt paving company. The owner, he said, would drive any new work truck he’d just bought into the work yard, gather the workers around, take an iron pipe, and hit the side of the truck hard enough to make a dent. “This is a work truck, boys,” he’d say. “Don’t worry about a few dings.”

We want to keep things nice. You make a new friend, you start out in a marriage, you build a new church, and you want it to stay nice. Your new friend tells a secret to someone else. You have a fight with your new spouse. You spill grape juice on the rug in the new sanctuary. Everything is ruined. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Forgiveness is the way into the good part of the relationship, the useful part of the building, the working partnership with the truck. Our relationships are working relationships. Our church is going to be a working church, a useful church. Your marriage is a working truck with dings that remind you of where you might have been more careful, or where you worked out something important.

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen Anthem

Every heart to love will come but like a refugee. We seem to try everything else first. We are driven out of the land of perfection with the people we love, because we can’t be perfect and neither can they. Sometimes we tighten down and attempt to live in the land of control. We are driven from the land of control and we let go and live in the land of despair and cynicism. When finally we flee that land, because it’s dry and inhospitable, we come to love. Or maybe our path is tracked through different lands, the land of need, the land of dependence, the land of rescue, but we finally come to love. Then we leave again, or forget, but we come back, if we’re lucky and wise, over and over to our spirit’s home, which is love. How do we live with the cracks? How do we live with the cracks in our own expectations of ourselves? One of the ways is by the practice of forgiveness.

Forgiveness helps us move forward. You have a piece of ribbon in your hand. Thing of something you need to forgive. Maybe someone wronged you. Maybe you have to forgive yourself for something. Tie a knot in the ribbon to represent this knotty thing which needs forgiving.

How do you do it?

You don’t have to wait for the person who wronged you to apologize. You allow yourself to look at the damage your resentment or hatred is doing or will do to you. Nelson Mandela famously said “Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.” You forgive because it’s better for you, better for those around you, and better for the planet. What does forgiving mean? It means not dwelling on the wrong that was done to you. It means to tell the story that hurts the least. If the story you are telling yourself about what happened was that this person must despise you, or that they don’t love you, or that they think you’re stupid, tell a less hurtful story, like that they were hurting, or they were careless, or that they were blinded by anger or pain. Tell the story that helps you let go. When you let go of what they did to you, does that mean you forget about it? No. You don’t necessarily forget about it, because that would leave you vulnerable to being hurt and damaged again. You forgive, but you may need to remain aware that they can’t be trusted with a secret, or you can’t let your kids be around them, or you may need to make a boundary with them, for example, you might say you will no longer talk to them about a certain topic, or you won’t talk to them if they have been drinking. You tell the least hurtful, most understanding story, and you draw boundaries. This doesn’t mean what they did was fine. It was hurtful. You are forgiving for you and those you love, so you can move on and not drag this thing along with you.

One of the most striking examples of forgiveness happened last June in Charleston, SC. Families of the nine shooting victims told their stories, expressed their pain to the racist white boy who had pulled the trigger, and then told him they forgave him. At first it made me mad. I pondered why they would choose to forgive? Was it that they were radically following their Christian faith? Was it because Black folk have been so terrorized in the American South that they know if they rose up and poured into the streets, violence would continue to rain down? Who am I to say? They named it as faith and they prevented further violence. Out of respect for them, I take them at their word. The horror followed by such a shining show of grace got the confederate flag taken down. I think they were right to forgive. I would like to think I could do that. They certainly are inspirations and teachers for me.

Jungian teacher Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Forgiveness seems unrealistic because we think of it as a one-time act that had to be completed in one sitting. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons. It is not all or nothing, if you can do a 95% forgiveness, you are a saint. 75% is wonderful. 60% is fine. Keep working/playing with it. The important things are to BEGIN and to CONTINUE. There is a healer inside who will help you if you get out of the way. For some, temperamentally, this is easy. For some it is harder. You are not a saint if it’s easy, not a bad person if it’s not easy. You are who you are and you do it the way you do it. All in due time.”

What about when you can’t forgive yourself? The story of what you did or didn’t do, the movie of the damage done runs through your mind on a loop. You may start to feel that you don’t deserve to have a good life, people who love you, that you have nothing good to give. One way to get started is to realize that if you can’t be understanding with yourself, you can’t be understanding with others. If you can’t treat yourself fairly and with love, you can’t do that for others.

Acknowledge the wrong you did. Ask forgiveness from the person or people you hurt. Make amends if you can. Then let it go as much as you can. Using the same techniques as with forgiving someone else, when you find yourself dwelling on it, gently put your thoughts on something else. Tell the least hurtful story about it you can, as long as it’s true. Come to the wisdom that there is good and bad in everyone, and just because you did something hurtful doesn’t mean you are a bad person. You are a human person. Getting stuck in something you did wrong is useless and harms you. Ask yourself if your best friend told you they had done that thing, what would you say to them? Be as understanding and loving with yourself as you would be with your best friend. Try to do better.

Resentment prayer. Start to untie the ribbon if you want to. Begin. And continue.

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