Gripes, Grudges and Grievances

In the last ten days, Jews around the world have celebrated the High Holy Days. On the Jewish calendar, it is the beginning of a new year and a time to account for their lives in the past year, and pay particular attention to when they have fallen short of who they want to be. It is a time to ask for and offer forgiveness. Worshippers pray their names might be written in the book of life for another year; in a sense, to start over with a clean slate.

In recent years I have appreciated the cyclical reminder, each fall, to review my life and my relationships, to remember how I have touched others’ lives, and, to offer regrets and forgiveness whenever possible. So much of life is filled with Gripes, Grudges and Grievances: all the little grumbles I hold inside when things don’t go my way. This annual reminder calls me to review and account for my actions, and to move toward transformation, that I may start over, refreshed, with clearer vision, and renewed commitment.

How else will the world change except by one life at a time? Hope can rise out of separation and alienation, wiping away the tears, mending the tears, healing the holes in our souls, starting as fresh as we can, not forgetting the past, but resolving to grow from it.

A Buddhist practice of transformation moves us through this process of restoration. It begins with any experience of suffering, our own, that of another person, or something larger. In opening ourselves to suffering we know sadness and sorrow. We sit with it, and in our very beings transform this knowing into compassion. We can learn to spend less time and energy on the sorrow, and out of it, to offer love.

Filling ourselves with compassion and love, we open to experiences of beauty that await us, despite our sorrow. Our eyes fill with colors and shapes: the green ridge on the far hillside, the sparkling, cascading waterfall, the soft, gleeful smile of an infant. Our ears fill with melody and harmony, with the sounds of poetry, with the glorious giggle of the infant. Splendor overcomes us. We are filled with beauty, and discover we are at one with ourselves and all around us. We begin to transform from sufferers of sorrow into practitioners of peace.

Singing: 1 voice
     When I breathe in, I breathe in sorrow,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out love.
     When I breathe in, I breathe in beauty,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out peace.

When I was young, my best friend was like a brother. We did all the things brothers do. We supported each other, and we competed with each other. We were equally skilled at ping-pong, and sometimes our games went on for hours. He usually won at pool. We worked summer jobs together, led youth group retreats together, talked late into the nights about girls and God. We went to different schools but we looked forward to seeing each other at church.

In high school, when my girlfriend and I were compelled by her parents to break up, I was glad when I heard she and my best friend had a date. I wasn’t so glad, months later, when I realized it was more than one date - they were dating.

Years later she and I married, had a daughter, and then ten years later we divorced. One morning this week I woke at 2:00 a.m. and thought of all the sorrow and all the love she and I went through. I got up and wrote to her appreciating, forgiving, and asking forgiveness. I wrote her not knowing what will happen. I wrote whether or not she responds. I wrote to feel more right with myself, more free.

Outside, on the plaza of the War Memorial of Korea, in Seoul, is a statue that lives in my heart. Two brothers, both soldiers, stand on top of a world split open, embracing one another over the ragged divide. One fought for North Korea, the other for South Korea, their family torn apart. While the armistice of 1953 stopped the gunfire, fifty-four years later families are still divided.

The embrace of these brothers speaks of the love and compassion that overcome suffering and sorrow, if we will give in to our deepest longings. My best friend is still my best friend. We reconciled long ago. The sadness, the suffering, the sorrow that came between us is not forgotten. We have grown through it, and the embrace we share upon seeing one another is the lasting testament of our relationship.

Singing: 2 voices
     When I breathe in, I breathe in sorrow,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out love.
     When I breathe in, I breathe in beauty,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out peace.

I had one of those “Aha” moments last week, reading an article a member of the congregation gave me. In it Leroy Little Bear, of the Blood Indian Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy, is quoted as saying, “In a language such as Blackfoot there is no I or ego.” Imagine that. No I or ego. The article goes on to explain that “A shared consciousness is … implicit in tribal consciousness.”∥ They begin with WE, and view each person’s contribution as an integral part of the whole.

If we Unitarian Universalists inverted our principles, we would begin with an affirmation of the interdependent web of all existence, instead of the inherent worth and dignity of the individual.

What difference would it make in our lives if we had no I or ego? What if all our understanding was grounded in, and grew from community?

My experience was an “aha” because Unitarian Universalists have been moving toward this perspective for some time. When we sit in Chalice Circles, we are small groups sharing, listening to the wisdom of the community as it is expressed through each person. We offer part of our story and see how it fits into the fabric of the whole.

My experience was an “aha” because the style of democratic polity we have developed in our congregations is often debate-and-defeat, win-lose, with resulting hurt feelings. Of course it is human to disagree. We see the same thing from different points, with different perspectives. Yet, too often, we come away from making a decision with people feeling “the process” did not include them, their voices were not heard, they feel left out.

I wonder if our healing of hurt feelings, our process of forgiveness and reconciliation, our transformation of sorrow and suffering into peace, might be enhanced if we developed more of a shared language of WE. We’ve made an important beginning with our new Covenant of Right Relations. We’re headed in the right direction when we affirm that “we aim to listen appreciatively, speak with care, express gratitude, honor our differences, and assume good intentions.”

Singing: 3 voices
     When I breathe in, I breathe in sorrow,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out love.
     When I breathe in, I breathe in beauty,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out peace.

While in Korea in July, we traveled the short 35 miles north of Seoul to the four-kilometer wide Demilitarized Zone, created following the armistice in 1953. It is a sobering place, a scar, a testament to estrangement, to the inability of a people with a common ancestry stretching back for millennia, to make peace, to reconcile, to re-unite.

On either side of the DMZ, the armaments of the North and South, create one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world, yet, in the last five decades, most of this artificial safety zone has been transformed into a nature preserve. There are still fifty-five year old undetonated land mines, but now Manchurian cranes, and other animals, feed and nest and raise their young, between these two fortified countries of brothers, sisters, and cousins.

There is another statue, on the South Korean side of the DMZ. A great bronze sphere has been broken open, a split from the top reaching almost to the bottom, with the weight of the two sides pulling them apart. A man, a woman, and a child are sculpted, on each side, hands against the sphere, pushing with all their strength, to keep the world from falling apart. They hold the hope, that some greater force, some deeper forgiveness, some superior love, might shift the balance, and pull together what human frailness and unbridled nationalism have torn asunder.

We stood in the United Nations building, spanning the border between north and south. It’s a small building, similar to the pre-fabs on school grounds, built with the longing that they soon will be replaced with something lasting, something with greater integrity. The conference table sits right in the middle of the room, straddling the boundary, with seats on opposite sides for negotiators, managing the fifty-four year old temporary agreement to cease firing at one another.

North and South, East and West, we human beings hold up the world, pushing with all our strength to keep it all from falling apart. We hold the hope, that some greater force, some deeper forgiveness, some superior love, might shift the balance, and restore a sense of the whole, the holy, a world at peace.

How we long for mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, Iraqis and Iranians, Palestinians and Israelis, Democrats and Republicans, young and old, all kinds of families, pushing with all their strength, on the streets of Richmond and Oakland, Rangoon and Washington, D.C., shifting the balance toward reconciliation and peace.

In our personal lives, our communities, and as we hold the whole Earth, the great Persian mystical poet Hafiz calls to us: “The sun will stand as your best man and whistle when you have found the courage to marry forgiveness, when you have found the courage to marry Love.”

Breathing in suffering may we become compassion; breathing in beauty may we become peace.

Singing: 4 voices
     When I breathe in, I breathe in sorrow,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out love.
     When I breathe in, I breathe in beauty,
     When I breathe out, I breathe out peace.

 ♦