How Can We Forgive?

The phone rang and I answered.
It sounded, you know the sound,
where you’re sure it&rsquo s going to be a recorded message
about lowering your mortgage payment or something.

There was that silent pause before any words were spoken.

And then a voice did speak,
a voice that I didn’t recognize,
but all the voice said was, “I’m sorry.”

I hung on to the receiver and waited.
There was no more to the message.
There was no hang up sound and no returning dial tone.
There was silence.

After some quiet, I said, “I’m sorry too.”

A few minutes later the phone might have rung again,
And that same voice might have said, “Oops, sorry, I misdialed again.”

This might have been just a wrong number,
but it didn’t feel like it.
It seemed more an existential experience.

Such a deep longing is in us to hear, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”

Goodness knows so much is going on for which to be sorry.

Our hearts and souls ache for healing.

The Jewish High Holy Days are ten days of spiritual practice.
The Book of Life is open
and people are encouraged to look inside its pages,
to examine our personal lives
and the life of the larger community and world.

What is broken? What aches for healing?

Where do you need to turn and return?

Kite Runner, the novel by Afghan born, Bay area physician
and writer Khaled Hosseini, is a story set in Afghanistan.
Two boys are raised in the same household, almost as brothers.
Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman,
the other boy Hassan is his servant’s son.
The story is full of their friendship.
But there’s jealousy too and the longing for a father’s love.

Amir aches for his father’s attention.
Nothing he can do gets him his father’s approval and his father’s love.
His father seems to see him as a failure
while Hassan can do no wrong.

One day, Amir hides in fear, lacking the courage to intervene
as Hassan is beaten and raped mercilessly by bullies.

Amir doesn’t tell anyone what he saw.

He can’t face Hassan.

We know what it’s like to wrong someone
and then not be able to face them.

So Amir betrays Hassan and frames him as a thief.
Hassan is sent away.

The Russians invade Afghanistan.
War torn Afghanistan matches Amir’s own war torn heart.
He and his father escape,
eventually making their home in California.

Years pass. His father dies.
Amir receives a phone call from Afghanistan
from his father’s business partner Rahim Khan.

Amir learns old family secrets his father never acknowledged
and hears that his boyhood friend, his brother Hassan has died.

Business partner Rahim Khan is understanding of Amir.
He knows how Amir longed for his father’s love
and how he betrayed Hassan.
Even though Amir’s father and Hassan are dead,
Rahim Khan tells Amir, “Come, there’s a way to be whole again.”

Amir returns to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
He finds his old home, a ruin of its former glory.
As he relieves his past, he begins to take actions to right his old wrongs.

It isn’t easy, but slowly, over time he comes to forgive his father,
and more importantly to forgive himself.
Slowly redemption comes. Slowly, he comes home to himself.

“Come, there’s a way to be whole again.”

I’m aware that people here have been through so much.
The past has had so much pain.
People have experienced horrible things up close.
How is it possible to return to life, to be whole again?

Our personal pain and suffering are amplified globally.
Each day the news brings us images of horrible atrocities.

In Baghdad, a fiery explosion ripped
through a line of people waiting to buy fuel,
killing at least 38 people, wounding 30 some more,
the victims, mainly women and children.
The horrific blast sent women, engulfed in flames,
screaming through the streets.
Two preteen girls embraced each other as they burned to death.

40 year old Bayan Jasem al-Kaaby, who was burned,
walked through the streets filled with wailing mourners,
strewn with blood, bits of flesh,
the remains of shoes and clothing of the victims.

He said, “We carry our death certificates with us now,
waiting only to fill in the date of death.”

When I try to imagine all this horror,
I weep for the mothers of those two preteen girls,
for all the people torn apart by this blast.

My heart aches that our country is involved in all the craziness.

I despair over you and I feeling so ineffectual, so powerless.

How can we forgive ourselves, we human beings,
who are capable of such madness,
who allow such madness?

Should I even name these unspeakable atrocities to you, dear people?

This is the way I am coming to think about it.
If people have to go through such horror,
at least I can do is face it and bear witness to it.

Surely compassion and forgiveness come
from being honest about what is.

To return to life, it might seem we would need to turn away
from all the pain and suffering and yet it is not so.

A colleague told me of his experience
when he was in chaplaincy training at a hospital.
A doctor came and talked to the student chaplains.
The doctor told his story of being a resident.
A young woman had been burned horribly.
The doctor treating her had to use tweezers to pull off her burned skin.
The resident was supposed to hold her down to keep her body still.
She was in such terrible pain, writhing and screaming.
He didn’t know what to do.
He asked her if she could tell him how it felt.
As she began telling him, describing the pain, she calmed down.

In community, we listen compassionately to one another’s pain .
We hold a safe space. We bear witness to what has happened.

Horrible things happen.
How can we forgive what seems unforgivable?

The most important reason to forgive is for ourselves.

You forgive to free yourself from past pain,
from all that is holding you in its clutches,
tying up your stomach, tensing your neck and shoulders,
waking you in the night.

People have hurt us, betrayed us, abused us,
and though years have gone by,
we are still giving power over our lives to these people.

We forgive to free ourselves.

And it’s not just other people.
We’ve seen our own capacity for violence,
seen the ugliness in us.
I remember a time when I felt so hurt by someone.
I was angry, enraged.
I was screaming and flailing about,
hurting myself, hurting the other person.
Later after I calmed down, I cried, I moaned, I sobbed.
I was so sorry.

All of the hurts, big and small, add to the hurt of the world:
the aching ground of Afghanistan, of Iraq,
of our earth, our home, our hearts.
Oh, world, oh, creation, I am so sorry.

Underneath all the craziness, the violence,
and ugliness is something more.

Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote
the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

No one was born to be cruel, abusive, murderous, neglectful.
Each of us has been conditioned and trained,
reacted and sometimes repeated what has been done to us.

Under all that conditioning and training is inherent worth and dignity.
Beneath all the craziness, there is a place of just being,
a place of calm,
a place where choice can happen,
a place where we can be free.

When someone has been treated horribly, hurt badly by someone,
it is very difficult to see or believe in the person’s
inherent worth and dignity,
and you don’t have to.

You are not alone.
This community can hold their inherent worth and dignity for you.

What you can do is begin to speak,
describing how you feel in a safe and supported way.

Paradoxical, as it may seem, expressing grief and rage
may lead us to equanimity,
to compassion for others and for ourselves.

The documentary film Encounter Point> tells the story
of Palestinians and Israelis who have lost family members
to sniper attacks, explosions, bombs.
They are Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
They believe that if they, who have lost what is most precious,
can talk and share their stories and their suffering, there is hope for peace.

At great difficulty, risk of life and public standing,
they travel through check points and around boundaries to be together.
Each Jew, Christian, and Muslim tells their own story,
and each stays present as they listen to the others.

Expressing and overcoming anger and grief,
their sharing helps stop the cycle of killing.

If you lost your love ones to violence,
would you seek revenge or struggle for peace?

Israeli Robi Damelin’s son was killed by a Palestinian sniper.
The sniper is now a local folk hero.
She shares her grief with this circle
of bereaved Jews, Christians, and Muslims
She listens as Palestinian families
tell of losing their children to Israeli bombs and gunfire.

She tries to wrap herself around it all:
all this grief, all this suffering,
all the joy remembered, all the love.

Her son’s sniper is eventually caught.
This sniper is also just a young man with parents
who have also lost what is most precious to them.
Robi Damelin works herself up to writing them a letter.
Will they understand her intent?
She writes from the most honest, deepest part of herself.
Will they meet with her? She asks.

The film ends without our knowing their response,
but her reaching out, her compassion leads her out of isolation
into connection and into peace.

Her personal transformation
links with her action for a just and peaceful world.

These are stories we need to hear.

Stories of retaliation, of vengeance make the headlines and get attention,
But there are many who are reaching out in peace making.
This peace-making is a slow process.
Having our President name other countries
as the axis of evil doesn’t help.
Having our country wage war and torture prisoners,
having other countries returning the name calling and seeking revenge
keeps our world stuck in a cycle of violence.

Still there are many, like Robi Damelin,
who are reaching out to speak, listen, connect and repair.
Even more want to be.

We are more than the events we experience and witness.
Our world is more than violence and atrocities.
Human beings are capable of violence, yes,
but also of goodness and decency and care for one another.

How can we forgive?
Slowly.

Slowly, we move from despair, grief, and rage
to hope, to community, to compassion.
We move slowly, not usually straight forward, but slowly and surely.
The road may be long and rough, full of detours,
but we keep on and eventually we get there.
We return to ourselves.

We forgive to free ourselves to live.

We are more than the child who was abused or neglected.
Imagine, really imagine, holding the little child you were.
The child did not deserve such pain and suffering.
The child was not at fault.

You were born to love and be loved.
You were meant to live fully.
You can choose to live now.

Imagine, if you can, the persons who have wronged you.
See them somehow freed up to be their best selves.
Imagine persons re-forming,
wanting to making right in the world,
and asking, begging for forgiveness.

We are more than a parent who lost a child,
we are the parent who loved and nurtured and enjoyed our child.

We are more than the person who messed up,
we are a person who cares, who offers kindness, who contributes,
who can start again.

Choice is ours. The agents of our lives are us.

Hold on to the glimpses you have of knowing
we are connected to all that is,
the pain and suffering, yes, but the joy and love also.

Hold a safe space for one another.

Last year Bill and I attended a couples’ weekend workshop
held at a Catholic retreat center.
At one point, the priest had us turn to our partners.
Each of us was to whisper our own regrets,
things we, not our partners, had done.

Don’t go on and on about it all, the priest said,
just name simply things you’ve done that you regret.

The room was full of soft whispering.
All these people were wanting to let go of grievances.
All longed for reconciliation.
Tears flowed.

The priest asked us to repeat after him.
“I promise to recognize the goodness in myself and in you,
to be creative and flexible,
to believe in our possibilities and our choices,
to forgive you and to forgive myself and to begin again in love.”

This ceremony of naming regrets, letting go, and renewing vows
supported us, in our busy lives, to giving attention to our relationship.

Next weekend Bill and I are offering a workshop here
for committed couples on Relationship as a Spiritual Path.

We want to support relationships.
We will offer safe ways for couples to remember
what they value in the relationship.
There will be opportunities for couples to name regrets
and renew their relationships.

This is the work we human beings can do in all our relationships.

Even after someone has died or is out of your life,
you can express your feelings.
You can forgive.
You can say, “I’m sorry.”
You can get on with your life.

When there is peace making in relationships,
you are freed up to live more fully, more joyfully and more justly.

Each relationship where there is peace making increases global peace.

Reaching out, even when it seem there is no response, changes you.
You write the letter. You pick up the phone.

Imagine the people, living and dead, that you wish could call you.
Imagine you could hear them say to you, “I’m sorry.”

Imagine the people, living and dead,
you wish could hear you respond, “I’m sorry too.”

Forgiveness is an invitation to new life!

Who will you call?

Come, there’s a way to be whole again.

Come. Come.
Amen.  ♦