The Mystery of Forgiveness

Together with so many, I was appalled, paralyzed, horrified by the brutal murders in Charleston — I tried to imagine those nine souls cut down without mercy after an hour of Bible Study together with their assassin in that sacred place.

Yet even this did not shock me as much as hearing the voice of a woman whose beloveds had just been murdered as she faced the one who had committed this horrific crime.

“I forgive you,” she cried. “And may God have mercy on your soul.” At first I wanted to say, “No, it’s too soon. Forgiveness is determined by a long and complex process of healing. It’s only been two days, since your whole world was ripped apart by this man. This can’t be real. “

And then I listened, really listened to her voice. I heard something so raw and so real and so radical. I heard her strength, empowerment and staunch refusal to be a victim. I heard her faith. It made me want to ask, “What is forgiveness?” Maybe it’s something totally different than everything I’ve believed. Maybe it’s something I never thought possible. And hearing her voice, it made me want to ask, “What is Faith? How do we find our way there?” These are precisely the questions we raise up now as we enter this season of Faith and Forgiveness, this season of the High Holy Days.

In a eulogy for one of those who had been murdered that day, President Barak Obama said, “It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.”

I was inspired to examine my own preconceived notions of forgiveness and faith, and ask just how I use my well-practiced cynicism to try to protect myself from the pain of living in this fragile world. During these High Holy Days, I want to suggest that we can help each other to awaken from the trance of old habits.

Clearly forgiveness is a practice; it’s a choice and a decision; forgiveness is not an emotion. And yet it’s also clear that forgiveness holds emotional challenges. Forgiveness requires both humility and courage.

That brave step onto the path of forgiveness holds the promise of the possibility of healing. What I witnessed in the voice of that grieving woman from Charleston was so big and so shattering. What I want to remember today is that each day we are given opportunities to practice forgiveness.

And those small moments add up.

Richard Rohr has said that, “All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.” He also said that, “The Spirit of Truth will always set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”

What do we do with our pain? Do we store it away? Do we numb it with alcohol, drugs or food? Do we distract ourselves from it with our busyness? Do we take it out on someone?

It seems that every attempt to avoid the pain of being human, just pushes me farther from The Spirit of Truth. And in my attempt to protect myself from pain, I am really just storing it away someplace inside me, till it weighs me down. I just end up carrying that burden with me, and it becomes a kind of bitterness deep in the heart, a poison.

Forgiveness frees us from the crippling weight of the past… and sweetens the bitterness that we have stored away.

Our foundational story, the one that we, as Jews, recall every day, is the story of our journey from slavery in Egypt to Freedom and the promised land. The word we use for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which could be translated as “the stuck place.”

When the Israelites left Egypt it didn’t take long before they met their own bitterness, stored away from the suffering of enslavement. It only took 3 days before that bitterness could be tasted in the waters along the way to Freedom. And they complained, bitterly. (The Jewish version of amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a KVETCH like me.) That bitterness needed to be transformed before they could continue on the journey towards the Promised Land. Leaving Egypt doesn’t happen when the Red Sea miraculously parts; leaving Egypt happens when the bitterness inside us is sweetened.

There have been moments of my life of journeying that I have been in Mitzrayim, the stuck place, stopped dead in my tracks by bitter depression. My normal sense of life as a wondrous journey has at times been interrupted by periods of confusion and paralysis. At times like these, I’ve felt like the people Israel, immobilized, enslaved in Egypt before they had the strength or even the awareness to cry out. Or even worse, I know that there are miracles all around me, and yet everything just tastes bitter.

At one such time I was living in the hills above Berkeley, where the beauty of the expansive view from my house contrasted cruelly with my contracted and depressed inner state. The combination of chronic physical pain brought on by a car accident, and the devastating emotional pain of a crumbling marriage, sent me under the covers, unable to move from my bed.

As I lay there quietly searching for the strength to get out of bed, I heard a voice whose tone was quite insistent. “Go have a Planet Burger!” it said. Now, I don’t often hear voices, and this message was so clear, so firm, so adamant. The only place I knew that served Planet Burgers was a restaurant down in Berkeley called The Good Earth.

I immediately got up, got dressed and drove there. I miraculously found a parking space right in front, and as I walked up to the door, the restaurant was just opening. I was led to a booth in the corner of the room and I promptly ordered my Planet Burger and some Good Earth Tea. As I waited, I was filled with a sense of expectancy, even hope.

The vegetarian burger was indeed delicious, but half way through my meal, 4 large, well-dressed black women came into the restaurant and were seated in the very next booth. The whole place was empty and I had been enjoying the quiet. Why did they have to be sitting in the next booth? Immediately they erupted into loud, enthusiastic conversation, and I had no choice but to listen.

“Sometimes,” drawled the first woman, ”You just gotta leave Egypt!”
“That’s right,“ the next woman replied, “Sometimes, you just gotta leave Egypt.” And then the other two joined in, saying, “Yep, it’s true… sometimes you just gotta leave Egypt!”

I sat there dazed, too stunned to even hear the rest of their conversation. I finished my planet burger, drove home, stepped into my house, gazed out the window on that expansive view of the bay, and knew for certain that my journey was guided and blessed. I stepped onto the path of forgiveness, and opened to the possibility of healing.

The pain was still there. I just was no longer enslaved to it. This was my T’shuvah, my turning. The pain became a force that could move me, send me towards freedom. My freedom began with compassion, first for myself and then for others. And in that moment of T’shuvah, which was a moment of knowing that I was guided and blessed, my heart opened.

The fear was still there, but it no longer owned me. With an open heart I could receive the amazing grace of forgiveness. With an open heart my faith for the journey could be renewed.

Sharon Salzberg teaches: “the power of faith doesn’t mean we’ve annihilated fear, or denied it, or overcome it through strenuous effort. … It means feeling our fear and still remaining in touch with our heart, so that fear does not define our entire world, all we can see or do or imagine.”

We step onto the path of forgiveness through the gates of our own open hearts. The words of our ancestors, the force of our deepest yearning, the connection between us as we pray, this holy space… all help to clear the way forward. As we stand at the threshold of this New Year, we can feel a wind at our backs that is the force of all the pain we have endured and all the mistakes that we have made. Calling us forward is the possibility of healing for ourselves and for our world.