CLOSURE

(Holly Near singing "Two Good Arms" at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1987)

In 1977, Charlie King wrote a song about Sacco and Vanzetti called "Two Good Arms". The chorus uses lines from letters they wrote trying to prove their innocence, and the title comes from a phrase in one of those letters. Holly Near eventually recorded this song on one of her albums, but before that she sang it at concerts. As a teenager, I had read "Justice Denied in Massachusetts", the very famous poem about Sacco and Vanzetti by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who used her influence as a poet and Nobel Prize winner to try to keep these innocent men from being executed. I was devastated by this wrong which had been done before I was born.

Later, when as an adult I heard Holly's rendition of "Two Good Arms", I felt the same emotions of grief and outrage come up in me. I was singing along one day when my daughter, still very young, came into the room. I had tears on my cheeks and my voice was pulsating with feeling. She asked me what the song was about. I hesitated, but I told her. She begged me to say Sacco and Vanzetti had not been killed, that no one would have coldbloodedly sent them to their death. I saw, in that moment, the reality of capital punishment land in her consciousness, the immorality of killing to punish murder. I wanted to take it back, to give her a chance at living in a world where we had other methods of dealing with extremely damaged people.


(Photograph of a protest against the Briggs Initiative organized by the Metropolitan Community Church, located in their "In Our Own Words" History Project -- date, location, and photographer unknown, but likely 1978 and Bay Area)

When I moved to San Francisco in March of 1978, I immediately plunged into radical political organizing. There was a lot to choose from, but most of the lesbians I knew or wanted to know were focused on two main issues at that time: Defeat of the Briggs Initiative (Proposition 6), and defeat of expanding the death penalty (Prop 7).

The Briggs Initiative would have removed gays and lesbians from school teaching. The way it was written, it was also a club that could have been used against straight teachers, and that angle was successfully exploited by the grassroots work of Lesbian Schoolworkers (the group which got my attention) and BACABI (Bay Area Coalition Against The Briggs Initiative). The mainstream gay organizations (predominantly white, male, non-working-class) put everything they had into defeating the Briggs Initiative. But when it came to the death penalty effort, I found myself surrounded by working folks, people of color, and/or political dykes.

The preceding June, two-thirds of California's electorate had passed Prop 13, which began the decline in California's school funding that continues today. For the past few years, measures against lesbian and gay rights had been passing in state after state. These were the first lapping wavelets of conservative rise to power, portending a tsunami (Ronnie Raygun) on its way. It's important to remember they were trying out several planks: Hate queers. End public funding of essential community services. Build more prisons and kill more prisoners. This is an interrelated ideology, and taking on only one of their toxic tentacles made no sense to me.

On the evening of 7 November, 1978, I and my friends were part of a huge crowd on Castro Street listening to the election results come in. When it was clear Prop 6 had gone down, a massive party began. But I didn't join the celebration. Prop 7 had vastly expanded the death penalty in this newly adopted state of mine, golden California, the land of freedom and promise. I went home, crawled into bed, and wept.

Prop 6 was defeated by 58% of the electorate. An almost identical percentage voted for the death penalty expansion. I had a lot to think about.

(Matthew Shepard)

On the morning of Sunday, October 18, 1998, I attended Meeting For Worship at the Friends' Meeting House in Austin, as I did most Sundays. Worship was silent for the first half hour that morning, with no one rising to speak. I was sitting on the south side of the room so I could see the trees out the high windows on the north wall. But I was also in a perfect position to see the face of a young man I'll call Sullivan (to protect his confidentiality) when he rose from his chair opposite me to speak during the second half of worship.

His standing created an immediate air of anticipation in the room. Sullivan was openly gay, partnered with Antonio, another man in meeting; they were both admired for their hard work. I had never seen Sullivan speak in Meeting; indeed, I'd seldom heard him speak anywhere. He clasped his hands that morning, but I could see they were shaking. He stared at the floor for a minute, gathering himself.

Six days earlier, Matthew Shepard had been murdered.

I'll do my best to repeat exactly what I heard Sullivan eventually say, in a strained, halting voice:

"It's been a hard week...When I heard the news, I wished Antonio were home. I had trouble waiting for him to come home, so we could talk. Finally, I did what I often do when I need help. I opened the Midrash and began reading.

"I turned to a section about when the Israelites fled Egypt in search of freedom. When they fled across the Sea of Reeds, in a way opened by Yahweh, the Midrash tells of how the angels in heaven were gathered around G*d, watching the events unfold. They were filled with fear as Pharaoh's army came after the Israelites, chasing them into the gap, closing on them. But when the Israelites reached dry ground and the waters behind them closed over the chasing soldiers, all the angels broke into gleeful celebration. As they cheered and danced, one of them noticed that G*d was sitting slumped, tremendous sorrow on his face. The angel asked 'Why are you not happy that Your people reached safety?'

"G*d replied, 'How can I be happy, when My people are drowning?'"

Sullivan stood a few seconds more, as shock reverberated around the room, then sat down, twisting his hands together. More than one of us burst into tears.

(Curved Corridor, Island No. 3, Ellis Island 1998, gelatin silver print by Stephen Wilkes)

Last June, a divided Supreme Court ruled out use of the death penalty in this country for anything except first-degree murder, even child rape. The New York Times article reporting the decision stated it was "the third in the last six years to place a categorical limitation on capital punishment. In 2002, the court barred the execution of mentally retarded defendants. In 2005, it ruled that the Constitution bars the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18." The article went on to insist "there was no suggestion from the majority that the court was moving toward the abolition of capital punishment." Not from this Supreme Court, no, I wouldn't expect a movement toward joining most of the rest of the world in re-examining the meaning of justice and punishment.

We are, for the time being, still held sway by John Walsh notions of retribution, of seeking some amorphous definition of "closure" when violence intrudes into our personal lives and takes away something irreplaceable. When I hear family members claiming they want the death of someone who murdered one of their own because it will bring them "peace", I always suspect they are mistaking closure for denial. If a murderer is dead, it's easier to shut away the emotions and thoughts attached to the murder. The problem is, capital punishment not only doesn't work as a deterrent, not for most of the people who commit murder -- it actually, over time, creates a culture where we are desensitized to the value of human life.

I know what it is to live with this kind of loss. I myself have felt homicidal in response to seeing irreparable damage and death of those I love, administered by the hands of people who need to be stopped. But I hold myself to a different standard, and I'd like to live in a society where our highest goals are perhaps beyond our everyday reach, yet we do not abandon them as goals.

(Hammer and Nails glass sculpture by Hans Godo Frabel)

Several years ago, I was close friends with a couple of dykes who were building their own house on 70 acres near Hamilton Pool, west of Austin. They lived hand to mouth and were in dire need of other carpentry-skilled hands to help them, so they created a series of weekend workshops to teach women the basic trade, in exchange for a small fee and the chance to camp out on their land. I signed up for one weekend, driving back and forth each day because it was hotter'n'hell and I liked to sleep without fireants around.

Also, to be honest, it was a vegetarian weekend, with one woman attending whom the rest of us called The Vegan Cop behind her back because she was so militant about trying to govern the eating habits of others. Friday afternoon, on the way out there, I'd passed by a favorite barbecue joint and stopped to buy two chopped meat sandwiches with a big RC and a side of slaw -- eating my dinner in advance so I could fore go the uncertain potluck later. After I'd eaten, I got worried about my breath smelling like carne, and had brushed my teeth beside my car, drawing the stares of cowboys in pickups.

Each workshop involved a special project, and our weekend task was to build a large deck on a rocky ridge overlying the Pedernales River valley. Late afternoon on Sunday, we were to the point of nailing down the plywood decking, having completed the frame, steps, and railings. Laney, the main carpenter, had instructed us to drive the nails fast and hard, with the intention of making the nail head bite down into the wood on the final blow, leaving nothing to stick up above the level surface. There were about a dozen of us spread out over the large deck, whaling away with great volume and vigor, an exhilarating end to a hard-working weekend. I had started a nail and kept my spread hand on the wood next to it, a couple of inches away for safety. But I allowed myself to become distracted by the conversation of a couple nearby, whose incessant bickering made it fairly certain they were in the throes of breaking up. My brain, without my direct guidance, decided what I really wanted to do with my right-handed hammer swing was connect to my left hand instead of that measly nail. The blow came down on my left index finger with all the force my biceps could muster. The end of my finger burst like a ripe tomato.

It didn't hurt for a few seconds. The shock was in the appearance. I held up my finger stupidly and said to the nearest woman, "What happened?"

She was a clipped-of-speech butch who worked as a prison guard. She said "Put something cold on it" and went back to hammering. When I didn't move -- her sentence didn't really make sense to me, I was in such shock -- she got up irritably and went to the nearby cooler. But all the ice had melted, and the only thing left was a Pepsi in a can. She brought that back to me and said "This is still cold, hold it again your finger."

As if sleepwalking, I did what she said. It didn't help, and contact with the ruptured flesh finally registered as pain. I cried out "Oh my god, oh my fucking god." This got the attention of others, and Laney rushed over, her back and breasts covered in sweat, her workpants stiff with sawdust.

"Come on" she said. "Let's walk you back to the house." She helped me stand and led me gently through the mesquite, a direct path instead of by the dirt road, so we'd get there faster. Once we were out of sight of the work crew, she stopped and lifted my chin, looking kindly into my eyes.

"That must hurt like the end of the world" she said. "You don't have to pretend to be all tough with me, and those other butch wanna-bees can't see you now, you can let go."

I did. I promptly dropped to the ground and began wailing as if I was three years old. She was startled, but squatted beside me and rubbed my neck as I cried my heart out. When I was done, I felt better and worse -- I wasn't in shock any more, but the throbbing in my finger was all-consuming.

At the house, I washed the wound myself and bit onto a towel while Laney poured peroxide over it. I should have gone to an ER and gotten stitches -- the scar is still very visible and utterly numb -- but I didn't want to do it by myself and no one else was available. She wrapped a thick bandage around it and recommended I hold my hand in the air, to keep the swelling down. When the others arrived for dinner, I sat a little apart, afraid someone would jostle me, while I picked at my tofu pasta salad. Before it got inky dark, I left, determined to drive home. I don't remember the trip. In particular, I don't remember negotiating the two bob-wire-and-post cattle fences I had to get out and open, drive through, and loop shut again before reaching the main road.

The next day I tried to work but could not type, of course. My supervisor, a buddy, sent me home but first he explained to me about the concept of closure: How if you don't tell the brain what to while you are in motion, and if it does not have muscle memory to direct it, the brain will search for closure on its own. What it knew best was where my other hand was, so it closed the circuit for me. He said this is why when you stub a toe, you'll often keep stubbing that same toe: Your mind is now hyper aware of an injured part and if you don't pay attention while you're walking, closure will involve making contact with that wounded part of the body again.

It was a great lesson. Ever since, when I've begun doing something new with my body, I've reminded myself "closure" which means "pay attention, or else some other part of you will be making the decisions".

(Homecoming by Herlinda Spahr)

When one becomes a pacifist, an opponent to the taking of human life under any circumstances, it's not a final destination you reach and set up a comfortable home. It requires constant thought and work to stop wearing your sword.

The airwaves are now filled with stories related to the US Airways story: 150 passengers, 3 flight attendants, and 2 pilots walking away from a controlled crash landing in the Hudson River. It's pre-empting everything right now, including (and seemingly especially) Bush's departure. More than one blogger has pointed out it's a return of the wheel, with implicit redemption offered, i.e., fratboy fuckup allows terrorists to fly planes into New York's most vigorous symbols and never catches the perpetrator behind it, instead using all his power and influence to dismantle the economy, military, and culture whose best qualities were what the terrorists objected to in the first place. (Like he forced hugs on all those Katrina victims.) But now, with hope standing in the wings, we return to what us most proud about being American: Competence, genuine compassion (not the mealymouthed judgement-poisoned kind of conservatism), and community response.

I agree, we're responding as a culture to the symbolism. One literary/arts blog (Dykes To Watch Out For) has a fascinating thread about how many of us are weeping over this story without clear comprehension. But I think the relief and catharsis we're experiencing has its roots much farther in time. I'm remembering the jeering campaign slogan Reagan used for re-election: Are you better off than than you were four years ago?

It was shocking to hear this coming out of the TV screen. It was a dogwhistle for the middle class (and those who aspired to it), who wanted to claim moral superiority over dirty working people whose obvious failings (not being white, not being married, not being Christian) were what was keeping them/us from individual financial prosperity. It was permission to begin the polarizing hatred that is the ultimate conservative weapon against dismantling pluralism, tolerance, and shared prosperity -- which the fundies hate every bit as much as Osama Bin Laden does, and for the same reason (terror of modernity).

[In a related vein, I recommend you read Sara Robinson's essay at Campaign for America's Future on how Their use of the phrase "moral clarity" does not mean what we mean when we say it, found here.]

After catharsis, we have an opportunity to think freshly about the nature of the world and our place in it, as those passengers on US Airways Flight 1549 are undoubtedly doing this weekend. What will justice and closure mean for us, as we click shut the door on Bush? I for one make a distinction between punishment (tempting as that is) and accountability. I'm willing to give up on holding accountable all those of you who voted for Bush, once or twice. You're already being punished for your mistake, and though it is likely whatever you're suffering is not as severe as those in other parts of the world because of his having been granted the power to shit on the planet, still, I'm hoping for more learning to come out of this nearly incomprehensible mess. For me and for you.

I'm not willing to relinquish accountability for those who sought public office, however, and claimed our trust. When I separate out the feelings that push me toward wanting vengeance -- when I assert my intellect and deny my lizard brain the right to make decisions (beware your fingers) -- then I'm clear: Only those who still dream of a place in the system as it was would be deluded by the "hope" that perhaps we can leave the culprits free to go on doing more of what they've already done. I believe in rehabilitation, but it must be demonstrated, not declared as an intention. Or, as we say in 12-step circles, action not words. And, since we're dealing with the spree of a dry drunk, that is especially apt.

Real hope resides in a vision which steps outside of the system as it has existed and seeks complete disclosure of all that has remained concealed, with a belief that we'll know how to respond when we have that information. Restore transparency, fully empower investigation, and trust our process (our once and future process) to set us back on the path of being a force for good in this world. I do believe everything else will follow, if we begin there. The wheel will turn again without a jarring lurch, because for me, closure is remembering all which has happened without letting pain determine my future place on the spinning rim.

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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MYRA'S FAVORITE SONGS

(Women's Music pioneers: Alix Dobkin's Living with Lesbians, cover photo by Ginger Legato; Meg Christian and Cris Williamson, photo by JEB (Joan E. Biren); and Holly Near's Simply Love, cover photo by Mike Rogers)

Myra plays music often in her study. I've taken the liberty of raiding the songs she plays more frequently and copying them into a Box.net file so you, too, can listen to what Ginny hears from around the wall. Click on this Myra's Faves link and choose your song to play.

The selections include (click on images to enlarge, though not all will enlarge much):

"Sweet Lullaby" by Deep Forest -- sung by an old Solomon Islands woman, the lyrics are part of an essential myth from their culture about the nature of death, sung by an older sister to her younger brother

"Family of Woman" by Linda Shear, originally on her Lesbian Portrait album, but this version from High Risk, a benefit album of performance by Chicago women for the Lesbian Resource Cancer Center

"The Old Woman Song" written and performed by Michal Brody (this was released in the 1970's by Linda Shear on her Lesbian Portrait album, but this version was sung by Michal for High Risk, a benefit album of performance by Chicago women for the Lesbian Resource Cancer Center)

"Summertime" by Janis Joplin (written by George Gershwin)

"Hay Una Mujer Desaparecida" by Holly Near, with Adrienne Torf on piano and Enrique Cruz on zambona

"This Is To Mother You" by Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt from the Western Wall/Tucson Sessions album (written by Sinead Oconnor)

"Western Wall" by Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt from the Western Wall/Tucson Sessions album








"Having Been Touched/Emma" performed by Holly Near; "Having Been Touched" was originally written and performed by Margie Adam, a women's music pioneer, and "Emma" was made famous by Therese Edell and Betsy Lippitt, but I don't have those versions available and this cover is excellent, with Adrienne Torf on piano and Nina Gerber on guitar

"Here Comes The Sun" by Nina Simone

"Get Right With God" by Lucinda Williams


"Show Some Emotion" by Joan Armatrading

"I'm Lucky" by Joan Armatrading




"The Woman In Your Life is You" -- this was written by Alix Dobkin and used by Liza Cowan as a theme song on her WBAI radio show, but I don't have that version in MP3 format, so I'm using the Holly Near cover of it, with Nina Gerber on guitar

"Testimony" sung by Holly Near, although it was Ferron who made it famous, a women's music classic

"Down to the River" by Allison Krauss (this brings up Myra's childhood religious memories in a good way; Ginny just rolls her eyes when this comes on)

"Waterfall" written and originally performed by Cris Williamson on the biggest-selling women's music album of all time, The Changer and the Changed -- I don't have an MP3 of that, so I'm using the cover performed by Holly Near live at the 1985 Michigan Women's music Festival, with Rhiannon adding her vocals, Adrienne Torf on piano and Carrie Barton on bass

"Russian Song/Ode to Joy" by Pete Seeger (Myra is attached to the "Ode to Joy" version done by Pete)

"How Can I Keep From Singing" by Pete Seeger (this is often sung at Quaker Meeting)

"Mountain Song/Kentucky Woman" by Holly Near -- the "mountain song" lyrics were a staple not just in women's music but as rhetoric in the movement itself; Meg Christian on guitars, Barbara Cobb on bass

"Old Blue" performed here by Cisco Johnson, but Myra prefers to sing this very slowly and mournfully as that's how she heard it growing up

"On Children" by Sweet Honey in the Rock

"Little Potato" performed by Metamora, written by Malcolm Dalglish (Myra sung this to both her children when they were babies)

"A Woman's Love" by Alix Dobkin (originally on Lavender Jane Loves Women -- written about and for our own Liza Cowan)

"Gulf Coast Highway" written by Nanci Griffith, performed by her and Willie Nelson (this song reminds Myra so much of her parents' marriage, it always makes her cry)

"Oregon Mountains" by Woody Simmons (huge women's music hit in the 1970s when dykes were forming land collectives all over Oregon)

"Love Is All Around" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (otherwise known as the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song)

"The Road I Took To You" written and sung by Barbara Keith, but it was the Meg Christian version on one of the first women's music albums ever which Myra and Ginny sang to one another in the Arboretum which helped launch and define their relationship

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FORGIVENESS

(Maggie at Bean Hollow Beach, near Pescadero, California, 1980)

A decade ago, a friend in Oakland sent me several back issues of The Sun. One of them, from 1994, contained an essay by D. Patrick Miller called "A Primer on Forgiveness". It was one of those cases of receiving exactly the information you needed out of the blue just when you needed it. I reread this essay so often that eventually I typed it into a form I could send to others. Since then, Miller has gone on to teach and publish something called A Little Book of Forgiveness at Fearless Books, which may be the same as his original essay. I hope I'm not violating fair usage or infringing on Miller's copyright by sharing his essay with you here. If I am, I'll pull it down. But I'm hoping it does some good out there first.


A PRIMER ON FORGIVENESS

copyright by D. Patrick Miller; published in The Sun, September 1994, Issue 225

When I was a fledgling investigative reporter in my early twenties, I wanted to save the world, to uncover wrongdoing and make room for rightness. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could spend my whole life trying to expose the evil deeds of “bad guys” and never answer the fundamental question: What makes people bad?

Uncertain how to blow the lid off that story, I decided that world saving was too tough an assignment. I set out to make a decent living as a freelance graphic artist instead. That didn’t work out so well either. Then, at the age of thirty-two, my career began to crash – along with my health, my closest relationships, my pride – during a prolonged struggle with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS).

What I first perceived as a vicious insult of fate eventually proved to be a great blessing in disguise. The profound psychological surrender induced by CFIDS was followed immediately by the deepest, most rapid learning of my adult life. I discovered the key that would renew my health, redeem my relationships, and reveal to me my true work as a writer: Forgiveness.

Before I became ill, I thought forgiveness was something you did every now and then to let someone off the hook for his or her stupidity or meanness, and to give yourself a fleeting feeling of warmth toward humanity in general. Now I see it is a radical way of life that openly contradicts the most commonly held beliefs of this troubled world. I’ve also come to believe that it’s the lack of forgiveness that makes people bad, spawning every kind of crime, from the intimate to the global.


It might be a lot easier to forgive someone if only he or she would show signs of changing. The paradox is that we are unlikely to see signs of change in others until we have forgiven them. This is true for two reasons: First, resentment is blinding. It limits our perception of what is real in the present and eclipses our vision of a happier future. Second, forgiveness tacitly gives others permission to change. We think that we grow and change only within ourselves, but also grow and change partly within others, and they within us. Some people need others to let them into a psychic territory of forgiveness, where they can feel free to try a new way of being.

Soon after I began internally forgiving my parents for all the wrongs I thought they had done me, they seemed to become more open and frank about their personal history, about what had influenced them to become who they were. Their revelations were stunning to me, and I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. Had I heard these things before but not paid attention because of my resentments at the time? Or did my parents subconsciously feel permitted to tell me more about themselves because I was showing them subtle signs of acceptance?

Now I know that both kinds of change were occurring. I’m no longer concerned about which is their change and which is mine. We all change together if we change at all, in a couple, or a family, or in the family of humanity as well. That’s what makes forgiveness so powerful. Anyone can initiate the changes we all need by opening up new territories within his or her mind – our one mind, really – where others can find the room to take a deep breath, tell the truth, and shake off the cloak of guilt they have so long mistaken for their own skin.

Begin, not with the idea that you are doing a favor to someone who hurt you, but with the idea that you are being merciful to yourself. To carry an anger against anyone is to poison your own heart, administering more venom each time you replay the injury in your mind. If you cease repeating the offense inwardly, your outward anger will dissipate.

Examine carefully the temptation to catalog, classify, and update the file of wrongs done to you. In doing this, the only case you build is against yourself, as you increasingly believe that you deserve what you’re getting, even as you complain about injustice.

“Forgive and forget” is a popular distortion of surrendering grievances. The real process is better described as “remember fully and forgive.” (It’s true that we do eventually forget some things we’ve forgiven, but it’s not something you can direct yourself to do. Trying to forget is just another form of denial – and whatever is denied is not forgiven.)

If you are trying to decide whether someone deserves your forgiveness, you are asking the wrong question. Ask instead whether you deserve to be someone who consistently forgives.

Living in forgiveness means yielding your grip on misery. Many people feel that this grip makes them authentic and serious; such is the melodrama of the adolescent soul. The adult soul empathizes with misery only to connect with those in suffering and lead them to forgiveness.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time communicating with friends about the state of the world, the flaws and failures of people we knew, the general difficulty of being human. Now when I find myself drifting into a pessimistic bull session, something new within me puts on the brakes and seeks a different, more useful direction for the conversation. I don’t want to be a Pollyanna, skipping gaily off into silly optimism and losing my connection with anyone who is suffering. I have to keep one foot planted there, at the ground level of another’s unhappiness. But with the other foot I try, sometimes quite awkwardly, to step in a new direction. Sometimes I think I might be a better exemplar of hope if I were more confident of where I’m going. But it’s possible that people are moved more by my tentative willingness to see things differently than by any dramatic declaration of a better way I might make. Perhaps watching someone learn to change makes a more lasting impression than having someone try to save you.

(Small creek at Sunol Regional Wilderness, East Bay Parks District, California, photo and copyright by Dorothy Gantenbein)

Don’t be alarmed when resentment returns after you think you have thoroughly released someone from blame. Our attachment to fear runs deep, and the thought of holding no grudges threatens to steal away our old familiar world of isolation and suspicion.

Every power you have sought through scheming, self-promotion, or purchase is a sickly virus compared to forgiveness. Only forgiveness opens the door to authentic, inexhaustible power, not of your making, but freely available for your use.

In a forgiving relationship, the struggle over power is replaced by a mutual impetus to serve. Jealousy dissolves into playfulness, suspicion into helpfulness, possession into shared freedom.

Early in our relationship, my wife and I struggled through an unusual pattern of conflict as each of us rushed to take more blame for our problems. “I’m causing more trouble than you are.” “No, I am!” I don’t know if this was easier for us than blaming each other, but it did lead us to allow each other to fail at crucial moments. Accepting that we both do fail – and will fail – is what might be called proactive forgiveness. It allows us to see our marriage as a mutual learning process instead of a battle over “getting our needs met.” As we realize that learning to love is our one fundamental need, we become more patient with each other’s tendencies and habits, which might otherwise be intolerable. Thus, we are able to live together with less and less anger, and to work steadily toward a constant joy in our relationship, but without any deadlines.

Make no mistake: Every grievance, regardless of degree, is an argument with divine creation, the fundamental power that made things the way they are. In other words, when you are made at anything, you are made at God. It’s crucially important to admit this; it can save many potential victims from your anger.

The grudge against God is the keystone to all one’s unhappiness. Follow all your petty, middling, and major grudges back to this keystone grudge, and then ask yourself the question, “Is it more likely that God was wrong to make the world this way, or that I’m somehow wrong in the way I’m looking at it?” If you decide that God is wrong – or that there is no God, just a faceless, mechanical universe that cares nothing about the human drama – then there isn’t much you can do. But if you realize that you can always adjust your perceptions of the world, you can start learning and contributing again. This seems to be the way to both humility and power.


I’ve experienced two fundamental ways of being in the world. Before I became ill in my early thirties, I lived the normal life of the ego: looking out for Number One, trying to preserve my habits and defend my fixed worldview, making bargains with my fears in order to squeeze some enjoyment out of life. Everything felt risky then, and there were few people I trusted. But I could always compare myself to someone less fortunate and feel like I was making out all right.

After my crisis, I undertook life on a spiritual path. This meant that I couldn’t focus on looking out for Number One, because I wasn’t sure of who or what I was anymore (or even if an I existed at all). It meant surrendering my habits, enlarging my worldview in light of new information and insights, and regarding fear as an illusion – something to be acknowledged but never allowed to dictate terms. Now I increasingly feel cared for by an ineffable, pervasive intelligence I call God. I trust everyone to be doing the best they can to find that same kind of security, even if some are seriously misguided or tragically deluded in their pursuit of it.

In a day-to-day sense, I don’t know if my spiritual way of life is any easier than my old, ego-driven way. In some ways, it’s more demanding. What has made the shift worthwhile is that now my life makes sense to me; I feel consistently guided toward growth and service, whereas before I deeply doubted my purpose and secretly thought that I had too many insoluble problems to be of real help to anyone. The bridge from my old life to the new one was forgiveness: the complete release of my pained idea of who I was. This is the most important work I have ever done, and in retrospect I marvel at the victory I was achieving during the time when I felt I was suffering a total, grinding defeat.

Begin with the dull ache of a long-held shame. Don’t try to argue it away; you’ve lost that argument too many times already. Accept that your shame has helped make you who you are. Then compare your sense of self to your sense of who you could be, who you’ve always wanted to be. Between your shame and your ideal vision of yourself lies a great longing. Shift your attention to that longing – and look back on your unforgiven shame.

Forgiving your flaws and failure does not mean looking away from them or lying about them. Look at them as a string of pitiful or menacing hitchhikers whom you’ve picked up on your journey to a changed life. Each of them has a piece of the map you need, hidden in his or her shabby clothing. You must listen to their stories and win the friendship of each to put your map together. Where you are going – a forgiven life of wholeness, passion, and commitment – you will need all the peculiar denizens of your dark side working diligently on your behalf.

Perhaps there is an insult or injury you have dealt that cannot be taken back or dismissed. It seems to be proof of your sinfulness, a personal stain that will never wash out. In fact, it is a mark of your initiation into a more serious life, the business of which only begins with apologies and recompense.

When did you decide that you had the power to ruin your whole life? How do you know how much healing is possible? Are you in charge of all creation? Are you calling all the shots?

When I came to understand how arrogant I was to believe that I was deeply flawed and doomed to failure, I was chagrined in a way I had never been before. The difference was that this chagrin did not add to my burden of shame, but helped dissolve it. I saw clearly my errors of thinking and truly released them – which meant giving up the expectation that I would continue to think stupidly!

Never forget that to forgive yourself is to release trapped energy that could be doing good work in the world. Self-prosecution is never noble; it does no one a service.

Don’t be fooled by the subtlety of self-punishment, and don’t mistake what is habitual for what is natural. Brooding, feeling bored, and reviewing your laundry list of grumbles may seem like understandable reactions to a cruel world. In fact, they are all ways in which your attention wanders from the purpose of healing, the only worthwhile work there is.

To accelerate forgiveness, practice gratefulness. Every night, try to give equal thanks for all the day’s events and encounters. When you become grateful for things that seemed unpleasant, you will no longer need to take pride in your wounds as a defense. When defeats, downturns, and disappointments are forgiven, misfortunes only add to your strength, alertness, and responsibility.

Learning is slowed less by lack of intelligence than by reluctance to let go of bankrupt ideas and exhausted ways of thinking. This is why some problems never seem to go away even when their solutions are clearly within our grasp. When you feel cursed by fate, look to your own stubbornness; when you seem blocked by others’ stupidity, question your own reasoning. When nothing seems to work, consider whether you have correctly identified the fundamental problem behind your struggles. The object of your blame is always less of an obstacle than your decision to blame.

Can be begin to imagine a politics of forgiveness? We’ve had the politics of one-upmanship, deception, and belligerence for so long that we have mistaken this way of doing things for “human nature”. If we believe this is our nature, then peace, justice, and human equality become unachievable, romantic ideals – used as excuses for more war and sacrifice, to keep the enormous wheels of global misery grinding along.

The extent to which we think world peace is possible is exactly the extent to which we think our own minds can someday be peaceful. To understand why distant nations fight over territories, national pride, or religious beliefs, we need to look no further than to our fight for a parking space or our struggle to procure a prestigious position over our competitors.


If we think of surrender as raising the white flag before our enemies, nothing within us will change. The only surrender that matters is giving up the belief that we have any enemies.

How can our politics begin to express forgiveness? Imagine politicians debating publicly in order to learn from each other, to educate the public, and to make sure all parties have been fairly heard. Imagine the media hesitating in their rush to judge people and events, in order to place reporting in the context of profound questions about human consciousness and moral evolution. Imagine our country’s diplomatic envoys arguing for peace in international conferences by admitting our warring history and violent tendencies first.

The meek will inherit the earth, not by learning to be aggressive but by bringing forth the latent power of patience and humility. If you are engaged in a struggle against certain people or ideas, you are bound to lose sooner or later. But if you are engaged in the work of resolving all opposition within yourself, you will find, paradoxically, more and more power at your disposal. This is contrary to the way of fear, which dictates the world’s rules of power.

Do not be misled by the many political faces of hatred. Jews and Arabs hating each other, Irish and English hating each other, white and black, Christians and Muslims, left and right -–there is no reason or dignity to any of it. Even chronic hatred began when someone attacked, someone suffered, and no one forgave. These insane examples were multiplied and passed on through the generations, falsely ennobled by tales of crusades, uprisings, and martyrdoms. The cycle of vengeance will never resolve itself. Someone has to step outside it and say, “I will take no pride in my tradition as long as it teaches murder, sacrifice, or revenge.”

Beware also of hating the one who hates. Remember that you are here to help that one lift off his or her yoke, not to boast that you stagger under a yoke of a better design.

I’m always amazed by the power of bigots or fascists to arouse within me precisely the kind of hatred that I despise in them. This is their real (if unconscious) agenda – to recreate their inward misery in the consciousness of others, and thus feel less alone. To understand the hater, I need to look at my own revulsion in his or her presence. And I have to look at this revulsion steadily, continuously, courageously – until I see exactly how my own loneliness has crafted such a fearsome mask. Then I am a step closer to understanding how bigotry might be undone.

Forgiveness sends a healing message much further than you might believe or comprehend. As you develop a forgiving demeanor, you change minds less by your words than by your example, saving souls less by your program than by your presence.

Forgiveness is a curious paradox of accepting everything just as it is, while working tirelessly for a complete upheaval in our behavior and consciousness. Some believe we must be constantly aggrieved to set right the injustices of the world – that good anger corrects bad anger. But an enlightened activism respectfully acknowledges all anger and sorrow while demonstrating the superior strategy of mercy.

Forgiveness is not mere sympathy, nor condescension, nor forced generosity. It is the ultimate declaration of equality, founded on the recognition that all crimes are the same crime, every failing the human failing, and every insult a cry for help.

The only way to remain angry at someone is to stop thinking about what is behind the crime or injury he or she has committed. If you thoroughly investigate someone’s motives, you will eventually find the sense – however twisted – behind even the most negative acts. They all boil down to one of two general purposes: One either thinks that causing someone else suffering will ease one’s own, or one believes that everyone deserves only suffering. These mistaken beliefs drive the world as we know it, and I doubt that anyone is entirely free of them.

You will feel a shock when you realize that you have mistaken cynicism for sophistication, and that very little of what you have so long and so bitterly believed is true. You have hoarded only the evidence that fits your theories of attack and defended your misery. With forgiveness, all that evidence will evaporate like a mist. This can be highly embarrassing – what if your friends see you losing all your vaunted toughness? But forgiveness doesn’t particularly care for your social reputation.


Forgiveness is the science of the heart: a discipline of discovering all the ways of being that extend your love to the world, while discarding all the ways that do not.

As forgiveness liberates your energy, you may be moved to sing, dance, write, make art, or otherwise celebrate. Don’t let your day job get in the way.

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