“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour—unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.” Henri Nouwen
Several weeks ago at the release event for Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith, I had a chance to catch up with one of my mentors and heroes in scholarship, Martin Marty. I shared how the publication of the report, although substantive and thought-provoking on many theoretical and practical levels, keeps leading me back to grief. Every time I open the front cover, I remember, Don Browning—dead, Norval Glenn—dead, and then my mind meanders on to the other mentors who have died in this past year, Judith Wallerstein-dead, Moscelyne Larkin—dead, Miguel Terekhov-dead….all of these giants in my small world and in the worlds of so many now dust. Marty’s relationship as a colleague and friend to those I mention is much different from mine as a student, but we shared a moment of silence with eyes gentling brimming.
I thought of Psalm 56: “You have noted my lamentation, put my tears into your bottle.”
Yesterday, as I celebrated Mardi Gras in a foreign land, I thought of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a Louisiana tale chronicling big sister Siddalee Walker’s journey to learn to live in forgiveness–a process we quickly see through her siblings and her mother’s life-long friends happens communally and often mystically as a practice of memory, story, courage, and vigilant boundaries. Vivi Walker, her mother, carries her own scars of physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse, which she channels destructively into alcohol, control and abuse. Each one asks: How do we carry safely the scarring stories of our past into a future with hope? At the close of the book, Siddalee gives her mother a gift in which there is no pardon, no Hallmark reunion, but simply a shared acknowledgement of pain.
“Vivi tore the rose-colored handmade paper off the box. She reached in and very gently lifted out a tiny glass vessel about the size of a fox-glove blossom. The vial was very old, made of sterling silver over glass, with one jade stone in the center of its little screw-on lid. …
It’s called a lachrymatory. A tiny jar of tear drops. In olden days it was one of the greatest gifts you could give someone. It meant you loved them, that you shared a grief that brought you together….
“Are your tears in here?” Vivi asked, holding up the vial.
“Yes, but there’s room for more…”
Vivi looked at her and smiled, “What are you laughing about, you crazy fool? I have been waiting for this gift my whole life.”
“I know,” Sidda said, now laughing and crying simultaneously, “I know.” (348)
Returning to my conversation with Marty, he asked if hospice professionals continue to use Granger Westberg’s Good Grief to understand the nuances a grief expression. Westberg taught at the Divinity School and the Medical School at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s and he produced a small volume that speaks to ten stages of grief (Kubler-Ross, also at U of Chicago, will publish her 5 Stages of Dying theory in 1969). I smiled and noted that the stage theory although still helpful in naming symptoms of grief (depression, anxiety, denial, etc.) has fallen out of favor as a progressive model for healing, which we both noted Westberg actually notes. I shared that I do actually have Good Grief on my desk at home, but not for its content but because it was a book of my grandfather’s, a retired Methodist minister, and I love reading his under-linings and notes, wondering what parishioner or pastoral situation he was thinking about when he dog-earred page sixteen or highlighted Stage Three. But as I skimmed through the Stages again I imagined how small volumes such as these or self-help websites that name signs and symptoms of grief expression as modern day lachrymatory–ways for us to note our tears through words and description, a way to feel that our pain is not at loose ends but has a place to be held, potentially shared, and noted as substantive.
A while back a post by Barry invited a deep discussion of forgiveness and as stories of trauma and offense were shared I imagined the comment boxes as modern day lachrymatory-an anonymous way for civil society to note the tears of our fellow human family. In that discussion, Fannie mentioned a book, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy. The story traces the story of the 2006 shooting in an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania leaving five children dead, four critically injured and all scarred. The authors share how this tragic story quickly became one of awe as the nation watched the Amish community speak and act in forgiveness as their primary public response to the tragedy. It’s a thought-provoking book that offers an accessible theological history of the Amish, going back to their Reformation Anabaptist roots in the sixteenth century, that helps give cultural and theological context to their lived expressions of forgiveness in the aftermath of tragedy and offense. Some key take-aways for me lie both in their exploration of what forgiveness is not (not pardon–meaning the wrongdoer is now free from suffering the disciplinary consequences of his or her actions nor reconciliation–meaning the restoring of a relationship and thus a renewal of trust) and what forgiveness is as “an unconditional, unmerited gift to an offender.” As the authors interview the Amish Nickel Mines families and community members, they quickly see that forgiveness is decisional and thus a conscious choice made daily, moment by moment, over months and years and even a lifetime depending on the offense. The decisional component of forgiveness for some led to variations of emotional forgiveness, but was not expected. Any positive feelings associated with the giving of forgiveness were also attributed to being an unmerited gift (from God).
The most powerful take-away for me though, and one I thought could most be pondered for us non-Amish members of civil society, is the belief that forgiveness is a communal not an individual act. Forgiveness here is not defined as transactional, as a direct exchange between the offended and the offender. Forgiveness imagines life and conversation as an act of re-membering both the one hurt and the offender in a way that can only be shouldered by the whole community. Asking the one hurt to shoulder the burden of forgiveness is too much to ask. The whole community must acknowledge that due to hurt and offense members of the community have been dis-membered and thus nuanced work must be done in order for membership to be restored. The authors conclude:
“…forgiveness is less a matter of forgive and forget than forgive and remember—remembering in ways that bring healing. When we remember we take the broken pieces of our lives—lives that have been dismembered by tragedy and injustice—and re-member them into something whole. Forgetting an atrocious offense, personally or corporately, may not be possible, but all of us can and do make decisions about how we remember what cannot be forgotten.” (182)
I know that many who are pondering joining the new conversation on marriage or have joined and are pondering what that means, are not doing so from a theological perspective. But for me, one of the first steps in conversation, one in which there is and has been pain, is to acknowledge the communal act of forgiveness, not as individually transactional but as lived re-membering. Each of us will do this in our own way (the authors of Amish Grace point out how forgiveness is lived in hugs, a covered casserole, being present at a funeral, making a visit, or in choosing not to take revenge or in choosing not to feel bitter in this moment and then in this moment and then in this moment, ad infinitum…). But the impetus to begin re-membering in order to strengthen civil society is there for me and I am committing to imagining how that happens communally.
At the beginning of 2013, I put together a GPS for the Soul for Huffington Post which included quotes that help center me and help me commit to living into wholeness. One speaks to the ultimate role of forgiveness.
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” Reinhold Niebuhr
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Lots to think about here, Amy, thanks for writing this.
I am currently re-reading Amish Grace and I too am struck by the communal nature of Amish forgiveness. I am still thinking about that and what it means for a community, in addition to (or, in some cases, rather than) the individual harmed, to forgive.
Your articulation of how communities are often harmed, in addition to the individual more directly harmed, by offenses is somewhat resonating. In some ways, our legal system recognizes the notion of community harm with, for instance, hate crimes laws that are enacted, in part, because of the psychological toll such crimes can take on a community.
But then, I wonder, does communal forgiveness pressure the person who was more directly harmed to forgive before that person is ready? And, to circle back to the conversations on forgiveness that took place earlier here, does an individual’s unwillingness or inability to forgive, when the community forgives, imply that the person who doesn’t forgive is therefore a bad person?
I also think that if I, as a person who (like many people) am horrified and psychologically affected by daily acts of violence in my city and in, say, Newton, were to forgive the killers…. I don’t know, it doesn’t really seem like “my place” to forgive. I think some of the victims’ families would be offended and angry if “outsiders” were to forgive those who killed their family members.
I’m not sure there are easy answers to these issues, but I do nonetheless wonder what such a culture of forgiveness would look like in the US.
Thanks for the reflections, Fannie. I too continue to ponder-especially the idea of forgiveness moving beyond a transactional, one-time act. There is a section where the authors reflect on how the Amish community went immediately to the family of the killer and offered forgiveness, and continued to offer forgiveness to them over the years and how many were offended by that. What did the spouse and children of the killer do that demanded “forgiveness?!?” But they use that example as a way of showing that they use the term “forgiveness” to talk about how to re-member a community that can be dis-membered through direct actions of trauma but also through bitterness or fear, etc. Because I tend toward the incarnational when thinking about faith, hope, love, I am drawn to this image of how trauma of any kind is a form of dis-memberment-both for the one hurt but also for the offender and for the community. And much like surgery and rehab for a severed limb, the delicate and nuanced work of reconnecting nerves, and regaining communal function will be different depending of the harm caused or experienced. An offender has dis-membered him or herself in ways much differently than the offended who has also been dis-membered. And thus our response to each and to each other must be different and lived and done with safety. I like their final quote about how forgiveness is a process of remembering with honesty what has been done without forgetting.
From Amy’s Post:
“As the authors interview the Amish Nickel Mines families and community members, they quickly see that forgiveness is decisional and thus a conscious choice made daily, moment by moment, over months and years and even a lifetime depending on the offense. The decisional component of forgiveness for some led to variations of emotional forgiveness, but was not expected. Any positive feelings associated with the giving of forgiveness were also attributed to being an unmerited gift (from God).”
I wonder if someone here could flesh this part out for me. See, for me, forgiveness has to have some emotional component, because it’s investing the ‘all of me’, in a way, if that makes sense. It makes living the daily, somehow easier.
I do appreciate the acknowledgement that forgiveness for some really terrible events isn’t simply a one-time doing. I really understand that, now. You see, I thought if I worked hard enough, said enough prayers, did all the ‘right’ things, said the right things; it would go away. Well, when is ‘a way’, away?
Thank you for posting this, Amy.