Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
It was an eventful day in the neighborhood yesterday, as an enormous storm blew in from the Pacific. I was alarmed to see some of the TV stations calling it a “bomb cyclone.” I sometimes wonder if meteorologists stay awake nights thinking up ever more frightening names for weather events. It didn’t much resemble a bomb or a cyclone, at least not here. It was one heck of a storm, though, and we did get a great deal of rain, and a certain amount of wind. On the hillsides burned by wildfires this year and last, people watched anxiously for mudslides. Branches fell, and the electricity wavered. The cats were incensed. It kept them from being comfortable outside, which is where they wanted to be. There was some flooding. We were lucky here. I do have to say, it was wonderful to get some serious rain after several years of drought. The trees are especially happy. And for the first time in years, we can say with some confidence that fire season is over till next summer.
John and I did, however, stay up later than usual to help with a neighborhood effort to keep a friend’s basement from flooding. I’m happy to report that, thanks to rain ponchos, flashlights, a portable sump pump, and the efforts of many compassionate hands, damage was kept to a minimum. I had a sentence here about this being my attempt to excuse a shorter-than-usual issue of Odd Company, but I had no trouble writing a bunch anyway, so…I hope the quality is reasonable at least.
In tonight’s issue we will further explore forgiveness. Till now, I have mainly talked about the importance of forgiving those who have hurt us. Now I want to spend a little time on the equally important matter of asking for forgiveness when we have hurt someone.
To get us into the mood, I’ve chosen a piece of music from Paul Winter’s album “Common Ground.” Winter is a jazz musician who loves the natural world. Nature frequently works its way into his art. Wind, whales, wolves, eagles, the canyon lands, and more. All play parts in the music of “Common Ground.” The track I’ve picked out, “Lay Down Your Burden,” is something of an outlier…maybe. It’s possible this song is about the need to ask Nature’s forgiveness. Certainly, it is an invitation to all who need to forgive or who need to be forgiven. Which, I’d say, is all of us. It is performed by Winter and his band, accompanying the talented vocalist Susan Osborn.
When we do something that hurts somebody, we might not even realize that something bad has happened. Even if we do realize it, we might not see the injury as our fault. Sometimes we think we’re doing the right thing, and it turns out that “the right thing” has hurt someone. Though we might not be sure we’re at fault, an apology is sometimes the best way to alleviate the other person’s suffering. How much does it cost us to express sorrow for accidentally hurting someone?
Or maybe we do fully realize that we hurt somebody; we might even have done it on purpose out of anger, or spite, or some weird sense of entitlement. In the privacy of our own head, we’re capable of coming up with all sorts of justifications for bad behavior. The thing is, if we truly felt no remorse, we wouldn’t have any need to justify ourselves. There are people who genuinely feel no remorse when they hurt others. Luckily, they are rare. Most of us feel bad when we hurt someone. This is one reason revenge generally backfires. We can tell ourself it wasn’t our fault, or the other person deserved it, or…nyada nyada nyada. None of that philosophizing cures the burn we feel in the wee hours of the night.
In the complex world of human relationships, the need for forgiveness is a constant undercurrent — a kind of itch that can ruin a life, ours or someone else’s or both — if we let it go. We can’t read each other’s minds, we don’t communicate perfectly, and we are not always sensitive to points of view other than our own. This causes myriad small transgressions, most of which can be soothed with a simple, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Many, if not most, small hurts are just the result of misunderstandings or mistakes. I accidentally stepped on your foot, or I forgot to phone when I said I would, or someone was waiting for a birthday card that never came. For the sake of our loving relationships with others, we are genuinely sorry, and in response we are forgiven. These small bits of give and take are what keep human societies orderly and affectionate. (And the fact that, lately, they are too often missing is part of what’s wrong with us now.)
But sometimes the transgression is not so small. We betray someone. We accidentally kill somebody in traffic. We lie in order to reap some benefit for ourself when we think nobody’s looking, or we lie simply because we lack the courage to tell the truth, and someone gets hurt as a result.
When we find ourself weighed down by an unresolved burden of guilt for the pain we have caused someone, it’s time to gather up our courage and ask for forgiveness. Often, we need patience as well as courage. The one we’ve hurt might not be ready to forgive. We might not know how to get in touch with them. They might be dead. Still, for our own well-being, we must take responsibility for our harmful action and try as well as we can to make things right. As Desmond Tutu says in The Book of Forgiving, “When we have done wrong and seek to make it right, we show the depth of our humanity. We reveal the depth of our desire to heal ourselves. We show the depth of desire to heal those we have harmed.”
How do we go about this? Once again, I highly recommend that you get a copy of Tutu’s book, which goes into a lot more depth than I can hope to here. But briefly, he suggests a process that I think makes good sense. First, gather whatever support you need from friends, relatives, officials; whoever you think might be helpful on your path. Next, admit — first to yourself, and then to others, including the person or people you harmed — that you were wrong to do what you did. This is a crucial step, because unless you feel genuinely responsible for what happened, the next things you do will ring hollow and false and the process will stop. After you’ve admitted you were wrong, it’s important to make it clear that you understand how the harmed person has suffered and what they have lost because of your actions. Sometimes the greatest losses are things like trust, security, or dreams of a life that is no longer possible. The next step is to ask for forgiveness.
As I mentioned, the harmed person might not be ready to forgive. In that case, we have to be patient and accepting. Sometimes, after thinking over the apology for a time, they’ll change their mind and find forgiveness in their heart. We can take the next step whether we are offered forgiveness or not. That step is the making of amends. This involves doing whatever we can think of to make the situation better. If the harmed person is ready to forgive, we can ask them what they need from us, or what they feel is called for. If not, then we can find some form of restitution that at least makes us, as the one who did the harm, feel better. This might be something like volunteer work or a donation — some way to make the world a little better, in honor of the one we hurt.
Finally, we honor the wishes of the person we hurt. If they want a renewed relationship, we can joyfully join in the effort to rebuild. If they want us to go on our way, then we must accept their decision and do as they wish.
It might be occurring to you right about now that some of this can’t be done until we’ve learned how to love and forgive our own self. So in a way, we’ve come full circle, from those early issues of Odd Company, in which I described the process through which I came to have a certain amount of love and affection for myself, to this issue on asking for forgiveness.
Next time, I’ll show how some of this applies to the many deep divisions we see in society today, and maybe bring things back to the original question of how to have a civilized conversation with someone who feels that disagreement is a type of injury. By the way, it looks like Odd Company will continue past the end of the Applied Compassion class, though maybe a little less often. Thank you to all of you who wrote to me expressing support! I’m working on responses!
This week’s good-bye is quite a recent poem of mine. I guess forgiveness has been on my mind lately. Till next time…
FORGIVE
Forgive me this wish
for afternoon sun
in cool autumn dawn,
or even the heat of high
summer, not this turning
again toward dark.
Forgive me this wish
for deaths of hornets,
for kinder hawks and owls,
and cats who spare birds,
snails that do not care
for leaves.
Forgive me this wish
for your hands to hold me
helpless in love, for
your heart to break open
with courage enough to say,
This I will not do.
Forgive me my wish
to pull you from
your busy grave
so you can hear my whisper.
I forgive you.
This poem, so touching, so poignant, so sad, but beautiful, warms my heart on this cold yet sunny day. Thank you Nancy!