by Rose Mary Dougherty

For the past year or so, I've been drawn into prayer around an invitation to what until recently I would have named forgiveness. It rose to my consciousness during a time of retreat when someone said to me, "Your ministry is demanding. You need to let go of the baggage you are carrying so you can live energetically in the present."  I hadn't a clue as to where the comment had come from. I hadn't been talking about my past or even much about my present. I had mostly just been sitting with the person in prayer. All these months later, I realize the comment was probably inspired. I tried to dismiss it but it wouldn't go away, so I decided to "work" with it for awhile.

In my mind, the words of my friend translated into something around forgiveness. I began to pray that God would show me what I needed to let go of, whom I needed to forgive, from whom I needed to seek forgiveness. When nothing showed itself, I tried to be more actively involved in the process, prodding my memory to recall the past more vividly. Still nothing. Lots of hurtful circumstances and people came to mind. I revisited times when I felt I had hurt others. But none of what I saw seemed relevant to the "heart of the matter," though I couldn't even name what that was. My efforts seemed not only futile but also a waste of energy, like trying to stoke a fire that had already died. Finally I decided that the best thing I could do was to plant a prayer for awareness and forgiveness in my heart and watch to see what showed up as I lived the present moment.

Since planting that prayer, life has brought me a variety of opportunities to be with this theme; three stand out. One is the Merton retreat that I wrote about in my last newsletter article. There I heard two men from South Africa talk about the lingering pain of apartheid, especially for victims who felt the need to look perpetrators in the eye and forgive them but found perpetrators unwilling for this exchange. I also heard two men speak of their times of imprisonment for their "crimes" of speaking out against human atrocities. I wondered how they could forgive the people responsible for their imprisonment. Yet I sensed, in each of these men, a deep serenity that spoke to me of freedom. I heard no blame, only genuine compassion.

Soon after the Merton retreat, the son of a friend of mine died. He left behind a wife and two young children, his mother and several siblings. For me, the tragedy was not so much this man's death but the broken relationships among those closest to him. Some people literally refused to be in the same room with others except at the funeral. The funeral itself was like being in the middle of a war zone where an unspoken cease-fire was temporally in effect. At the time, I could only stand in the anguish of the situation. Driving home, I began to think about it. My reflection shed light on some of my own less volatile conflicts.

As in a war zone, it didn't matter how the conflict had begun. In fact, the original incident was probably long buried under layers of embellished memories. If the truth were known, probably each person, however unknowingly, had contributed to the conflict. Yet who could name the culpability of the other? Who could know the heart? And if they could, what did that matter now? The war now had a life of its own. What were the stakes people had in it now? What would it take to declare a unilateral surrender? What would it take to let go?

Against the backdrop of these two experiences, I read The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. After telling his own story of being forced as a prisoner in a concentration camp to hear the confession of a dying Nazi soldier who asked his forgiveness, the author challenges readers to find their own response to the question, "What would you do if you were in my place?" There was no consensus among the writers who responded to his question. I tried to deal with the author's challenge myself, but I kept coming back to my own questions, "Who am I to forgive anyone? What is forgiveness anyway?" Though I once thought I knew a great deal about forgiveness, I found I now knew next to nothing about it. In the past I might have described forgiveness in this way: "You do something to hurt me, and I know you're guilty. Perhaps some day I will be able to forgive you. With grace, in due time, I am able to I say I don't hold it against you."

But that process makes no sense to me right now. It is not mine to absolve you of your guilt or to absolve myself, as though I could really know what your or my guilt is anyway. It seems the invitation to me right now is not about forgiveness, whatever that might be, but about responding to the timing and the grace of letting go. I'm not even sure what I need to let go, and I'm not sure I need to know in order to say my yes to the process. Perhaps the letting go is really being actively present as I am hollowed out.

I find my heart, encrusted as it is in all the defendedness of my holding on to the pain and disillusionment I may never be able to name, gradually turning toward the Light. Once again, I feel the invitation to acknowledge the presence of the Light, to put myself squarely in its beam and pray, "Penetrate the shell of my defended heart." There is some little fear but mostly trust. It is not my doing, only my willingness. Perhaps in time that Light, which is really loving kindness for us all, will find its way through me for our world. Maybe what I used to name forgive-ness I would now name a willingness for loving kindness.