A SEASON FOR FORGIVENESS

11/9/08 Summit UU Fellowship  Rev. Kathleen A. Green

    “In Northern Ireland, it takes a lot of courage for a Protestant and a Catholic to be good friends.  But these two were.  Colin, the Protestant, and Seamus, the Catholic, became and stayed best friends.  At first, Colin’s mother was concerned.  She had been taught to mistrust the other side in this centuries-long conflict.  She was uncomfortable with the easy camaraderie that the boys had with each other.  But after a while she got used to it.

     The boys grew up and, as young adults, began to move further afield in the world.  But in Belfast, the lines are drawn very sharply.  Catholics go here, Protestants there.  Finding a welcoming place for both of them was hard.  But they managed. 

     Then one night Colin and Seamus stopped into a pub on their way home from seeing a film.  It was a border pub, in the Catholic part of town but not far from where many Protestants lived.  It’s why they went there.  The fact that Colin was a Protestant was known by the bartender but no one else. And the old bartender had seen enough of hatred and violence to want to draw      attention to Colin’s presence.

     But a Protestant loyalist, burning with anger which had turned to hate at the death, a few weeks earlier, of his best friend, walked the street near the pub in a towering rage. Looking in at the warm room filled with young men, he saw Colin and Seamus and realized he knew Colin from primary school.  What was his school chum doing with a Catholic?  He was betraying his people!

     Then the man remembered where he had hidden the gun, stolen from a soldier who got too drunk to notice.  Flush with excitement, he ran to the hiding place and pulled it out.  Checking to make sure it was loaded, he turned the corner and saw again the pub and the men inside who he was sure were his enemies.  Throwing open the door, he turned his gun on Colin and Seamus, and within moments, they both were dead.

     The heartbreaking news was brought to Colin’s mother.  Just like that, her boy was dead, killed by someone from her own faith because he happened to be friends with someone of the other.  Anger blossomed from her grief.  And soon her anger turned to hate.  She wanted revenge.  But she couldn’t figure out who to take revenge on.  The Catholics for befriending her son and putting his life in jeopardy?  Or the Protestants for killing her boy?  The hate gnawed at her and she lost weight, became depressed, and wanted to die.

     But the story does not end here.  This mother, who had known such grief and the results of hatred, became a part of a project on forgiveness, led by the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.  This project brought together women from both sides of the Irish "troubles" who had lost sons to murder.  As one of the leaders of the project put it, "We started with women who understandably felt extremely hurt and very angry in their grief.  We ended with women who mourned the loss of their children but, through forgiveness, gained a measure of strength with which to cope.  These women had learned to forgive and because they had done so, their burden of grief and hate was lifted. (IONS, Sept-Nov, 2003, p.13) “  My good colleague Barbara ten Hove shared that story with her congregation some years ago when she spoke about forgiveness.

     Forgiveness is about letting go of your past, shifting your present, and protecting your future. 

          All of us know people, and we know ways in which we ourselves, remain chained to the past.  Every one of us – teen, young adult, elder - has at some point in our lives been hurt.  We have been wronged.  Some of us in small ways, some of us in large ways.  After we have been hurt, even long after we are beyond the moments that hurt us, those moments can still wield power over us. 

     Remember the children’s story last week?  The mule who fell into a deep ditch and the farmer couldn’t lift the mule out, or dig the mule out, so he decided to just bury him and put him out of his misery.  But with every shovel of dirt thrown on him, the mule would shake it off and stomp it down.  He did so until he stood high enough to walk out of the ditch.  Forgiveness is one way of shaking off – shaking off that which would keep our souls imprisoned; shake off the chains, and then stomping it down in order to lift ourselves out of the darkness – out of the hole – of grudgeville.    

    True forgiveness frees us from the captivity of the past, and helps us move into a more promising future.  In fact, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Without forgiveness, there is no future.” And not only can we forgive those who have personally wronged us, we can also forgive more abstract groups of people --- those who fight for causes we are against or who espouse ideas different from our own.  I find that for myself, this forgiveness is much more difficult.  I know that all of the worlds’ great religions teach that forgiveness is a virtue, but that doesn’t make it any easier!

     I will confess to you that my heart has been aching since election night over the passing of Prop 8.  I have cried for the couples….for the children….. for the $70 million spent.  I think I didn’t do enough.  I didn’t put my energy behind the issue early enough.  I have been sad and depressed and angry over the Prop 8 issue.

      And then I pulled out a newspaper article I’d saved from this past Aug.  The Union Tribune Religion & Ethics Editor wrote an article on the healing power of forgiveness after having participated in seminars at the University of Cambridge in England.  “People who learn to forgive seem to have fewer cardiovascular problems and stress-related ailments, and generally fell happier than those still holding a grudge.”  A Mayo Clinic journal has reported that people who held grudges had increased blood pressure and heart rates and forgiveness related to less nicotine dependence and less drug abuse.  Okay, so both religion and science say that forgiveness is good, but it was the letter I read on a ministers’ email  list that spoke to me.  From Rev. Clark Olsen:

Dear Colleagues,

You might wish to know that the UUA sent bouquets of yellow roses on 

Election Day to Marie Reeb Maher, widow of the Rev. James Reeb, who  died following the attack on Jim, Orloff Miller and myself in Selma in  March, 1968.  Similar yellow-rose bouquets were sent to each of Marie  and Jim's children, as well as to the daughters of Viola Liuzzo, a UU  from Detroit who had journeyed to Alabama to help with the March to  Montgomery and was killed by Klansmen while she was driving with a  young black man along the Selma-Montgomery highway.

Because I was involved in tracking down their addresses, I have 

received words of gratitude from a member of each family.”

James Reeb’s daughter said “My heart is at peace”.  Viola Liuzzo’s daughter said “My sisters and I thank you for never forgetting our mother”. 

    This is the season of gratitude.   The season of harvest.  It is also a season for forgiveness – when we realize that our grudges and resistance to forgive bring us only continued grief, imprisonment, and brokenness.  This is a season for forgiveness – when we admit that the time for civility, respect, and graciousness is here and the door to reconciliation (the next step) may just have the possibility to open a little wider.  It doesn’t mean that we cease our fight for justice.  It doesn’t mean that we stop speaking our truth in love.  And “forgive” doesn’t always go hand in hand with “forget”.  While forgiveness can be offered, remembrance can help us set healthy boundaries.  We need to remember acts of horror - Deaths of James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, the Holocaust, Rwanda, Abu Ghraib -  to prevent atrocities from happening again.  In other words, sometimes we have to remember the offense, even as we forgive the offenders.

     Just as the past several weeks I’ve stood here in this pulpit and cried that the time is now for standing on the side of love; for standing up and speaking out against injustice, today I tell you that now is the time for forgiveness.  Forgiving others and ourselves.  I encourage you to search your own hearts to see what grudges you may be carrying.  What is keeping you from wholeness and knowing life’s joy?  Where in your life is there a need for forgiveness – not to forget, not to let someone off the hook, not even to reconcile, but to forgive and free yourself.

     We can begin again in love.  As we, puzzles with missing pieces, would wish to be accepted, we too can be accepting.  We can begin the process of not forgetting but of anchoring a wrong in its own time, letting it recede into the past, as we live and move toward the future.

     Reverend Laurel Hallman reminds us that in this hurting world, it is our turn, as Unitarian Universalists, to keep a language of hope, of forgiveness alive, to live it, to hold it to our hearts, and speak to the depths of those who so desperately need to hear it.

Now is the time.  May it be so.

READINGS:

A Person Is a Puzzle

A person is a puzzle. Sometimes from the inside, it feels like some pieces are missing.

Perhaps one we love is no longer with us. Perhaps one talent we desire eludes us.

Perhaps a moment that required grace found us clumsy.

Sometimes, from the inside, it feels like some pieces are missing.

A person is a puzzle. We are puzzles not only to ourselves but to each other.

A puzzle is a mystery we seek to solve -- and the mystery is that we are whole even with our missing pieces.

Our missing pieces are empty spaces we might long to fill, empty spaces that make us who we are.

The mystery is that we are only what we are -- and that what we are is enough.

In the stillness of this morning, into the accepting peace of a still sky, let us offer our failings, our inadequacies, into the silence.

And let us know that we are accepted, by God and by this company, exactly as we are.

Accepted -- missing pieces, and all.

“Forgiveness” is one word but not one act alone.

Forgiveness is the process we live through in order to restore a relationship.

Forgiveness is the process of coming back together again with another or with oneself after a separation.

Sometimes the wrongdoing is the separation.

Forgiveness involves the acknowledgment and, where possible, the mutual recognition of what went wrong,

of what we are doing to right the balance,

and especially of the meaning and importance of the relationship.

Forgiving is not forgetting.

Forgiving is anchoring a wrong in its own time,

letting it recede into the past as we live and move toward the future.

Call to Worship:

Come into this circle of community. Come into this sacred space.
Be not tentative. Bring your whole self!
Bring the joy that makes your heart sing.
Bring your kindness and your compassion.
Bring also your sorrow, your pain.
Bring your brokenness and your disappointments.
Spirit of love and mystery; help us to recognize the spark of the divine that resides within each of us.
May we know the joy of wholeness.
May we know the joy of being together.

Benediction

As we leave this sacred hour

As we leave this precious community

As we go about our lives – with the humdrum tasks, the difficult relationships, and unexpected surprises

We have many choices to make.

Let us choose to laugh

Let us choose to love

Let us choose to forgive