Meditation by Richard Gilbert

Be gentle with one another -
It is a cry from the lives of people battered by thoughtless words and brutal deeds;
It comes from the lips of those who speak them, and the lives of those who do them.
Who of us can look inside another and know what is there of hope and hurt, or promise and pain?
Who can know from what far places each has come or to what far places each may hope to go?
Our lives are like fragile eggs. They crack and the substance escapes.
Handle with care!
Handle with exceedingly tender care for there are human beings within,
Human beings as vulnerable as we are, who feel as we feel, who hurt as we hurt.
Life is too transient to be cruel with one another;
It is too short for thoughtlessness, too brief for hurting.
Life is long enough for caring, it is lasting enough for sharing, precious enough for love.
Be gentle with one another.

Love Is Learning to Forgive
Reverend Roberta Finkelstein
Sunday December 4, 2005

"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean. The dream explains why we need to be forgiven, and why we must forgive." Those words from Dag Hammarskjold’s spiritual autobiography, called Markings, invoke the essence of what I want to talk about this morning: the miracle of forgiveness, the human need to forgive and be forgiven, the human power to dream that dream and approach wholeness, health, and healing.

Is forgiveness a possibility, or an impossible dream? So much of human history seems to be about the inability to forgive – the sins of the fathers falling on the heads of the children to the seventh generation, a cycle of revenge and anger that goes on and on. But there are signs of hope. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa gives us many powerful examples. So does the existence of organizations like Murder Victim’s Families for Reconciliation. This organization opposes the death penalty in the United States. They say, “Reconciliation means accepting you can't undo the murder but you can decide how you want to live afterwards.”

Forgiveness is more than a possibility, it is a requirement for healthy living. If we ever want to heal our hurts, we must learn to forgive. Much of my adult life has been about healing - both the personal healing of my own hurts and professional involvement in healing of the hurts of others. Early in my nursing career, I was prompted to do some serious thinking about that career choice and what had motivated me to go into nursing. After doing some soul work I recognized that I had become a healer because I needed healing. The healing did not come from my nursing job, but it came with time and effort. Effort which eventually allowed me to change careers and to bring a healthy understanding of healing into ministry. Part of that effort was learning to forgive.

Forgiveness. It is not simplistic. It is not, "Oh it's OK. I don't mind." That would be dishonest. In order to forgive those who have hurt us most profoundly, we must first be willing to acknowledge, to ourselves and to others, how very hurt we are. That is difficult because often when we admit that we are hurt, we feel shame. The feeling of vulnerability can stop us cold. To get to forgiveness, we need to move past that inner sense of shame.

Sometimes we can dispel our shame and regain a sense of power by confronting those who have hurt us. I say sometimes because there are circumstances where confrontation is simply not safe. If the person who has hurt us is very sick, or very dangerous, no good can come from the confrontation. In these cases, forgiveness may come only with distance, safety, and time. But in the end, none of us benefit from nursing life long resentments - even the most legitimate of resentments.

The process of healing often involves peeling away layers of unhelpful scar tissue, and allowing old hurts and vulnerabilities to be exposed. This does not mean dismantling all your defenses. Some scar tissue is protective. But often we have, in self defense, fallen into patterns of behavior that keep us from achieving joy and fulfillment. The irony is that what was once protective becomes habit, and this habit eventually becomes an unhealthy and costly dysfunction – a defense against something that is no longer there. So we need to give up that which once was helpful but which is no longer helpful - old angers, old fears, old defenses. Eventually we come to a place where we know that we must forgive. What is most scary about that moment is that it may also be the moment when we recognize our own imperfections, and our own need for forgiveness. In the process of forgiving we are also forgiven.

Rev. Sara York says, "There is incredible power in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not rational. One can seldom find a reason to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is often undeserved. It may require a dimension of justice (penance, in traditional terms) but not always, for what it holds sacred is not fairness, but self-respect and community. Forgiveness does not wipe away guilt, but invites reconciliation. And it is as important to be able to forgive as it is to be forgiven.”

No, we do not forgive and forget. But when we exercise the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from the destructive hold the past has on us. Hatred, anger, righteous indignation about being wronged - these things eat away at us from the inside and eventually destroy us.

We cannot just will ourselves into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it and still not be able to. We can however, be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn't of our own making. Its power is rooted in love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape. Martin Luther King, Jr., defined agape as, “Love seeking to preserve and create community.” This kind of love is human, but it is also the grace of a transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life itself. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invite the power of agape to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival.

This is a community that love created and that love preserves. Yes, there have been and will be disagreements, miscommunications, hurts and flares of anger. But, as a group, you have persisted in working towards consensus, healing the hurts, and continuing your forward progress. The power of agape - the love that preserves and creates community - has been with you.

In addition to the work you have done together, you have all been faced with individual and family crises, with hard decisions about work and school and relationships, with death and illness and losses and disappointments. What better gift can you give to yourselves, and to each other, and to those in your circles of affection, than the gift of forgiveness?

Again, I want to emphasize that forgiveness is part of a process of healing, not an instantaneous event. But we can always be about beginning and nurturing that process. Several years ago, my father was critically injured in an automobile accident. He and I had not had a good relationship for many years. But we stayed in touch the best we could, and we both knew that when the time came, he could call on me and I would take care of him. In fact he had my contact information in a laminated card in his wallet.

As I sat at his hospital bed and looked into his pain wracked face, I was well aware of my own need to let go of past hurts and resentments. The time for trying to make things fair and right was long past. I was never going to convince him that he had been wrong about any of the things I felt that good-old righteous anger about. The time for forgiveness and reconciliation and compassion was upon me. So I practiced what I had so often preached: the spiritual discipline of forgiveness. I was able to take care of him in his final months of life. And I knew that being able to do that has been an ongoing blessing in my life: the blessing of not having to life with regret for things undone.

This discipline of forgiveness is one that requires regular attention. I want to offer you an opportunity to do a brief exercise in forgiveness. You will need two index cards each and something to write with. In a moment, we will enter into silence. I invite you to take an inventory of the resentments and hurts that are holding you back, causing you pain, getting too heavy to carry. Are there any that you wish to be rid of? Petty hurts nursed into large wounds? Words spoken thoughtlessly, actions taken heedlessly? On the first card, write whatever words describe the hurts you believe you can unload without further work, simply by making the conscious decision to let them go. To say, “The time for dealing with this is long past.” Then bring that card up and toss it in this liturgical wastebasket.

The second card is for more complicated issues. Use it to write yourself a reminder about any situation that you feel is unresolved but could be resolved. Is there somebody you need to talk to - is there anger or hurt that you have not expressed - or perhaps a regret that you have not shared – an apology still unmade? Promise yourself that you will attend to any unfinished business that can be dealt with productively. Keep the card as your impetus.

The promise of forgiveness is always before us. Now enter into the silence in this safe place, this place of agape and reconciliation, and be receptive to that promise. (Pause, prompt people to come up if necessary)

(Hold up wastebasket) Here the chain of anger and vengeance is broken. Here the burden of pain is lightened. We have filled this basket with the hurts and angers that we no longer need or want. By that action we free ourselves for the productive work ahead - the work of creating and preserving our families and our communities. These cards will be burned in a safe place. I will not read them. I just don't want to set off the sprinkler system by burning them right here and now. Although, metaphorically, I’m always trying to set the church on fire!

The healing process is more than just a process of giving up old hurts. The power that allows forgiveness to happen is the transcendent power of love. Some time ago a friend, who had decided to leave the UU church and become a Presbyterian, asked me what the central message of my sermons was. I thought about it for a minute, then told her that no matter what the subject matter of a particular sermon, the message is always that we can love each other - in intimate relations, families, and religious communities - enough to overcome the forces of disintegration. I believe in the love that casts out fear, the love that creates and preserves community, the love that is larger than our hearts and minds. Agape.

Amy Tan's book, The One Hundred Secret Senses, uses a different metaphor to describe this love. "The world is not a place,” she wrote, “but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. I once thought love was supposed to be nothing but bliss. I now know that it is also worry and grief, hope and trust. And believing in ghosts - that's believing that love never dies. If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find then any time with our hundred secret senses."

We use those secret senses to cope with loss, and to redirect our energies into positive, hopeful directions. Galen Guengerich is one of the ministers of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York. In his published sermon series called "Winter to Spring" he writes about the problem of evil from a UU perspective. In a sermon called "The Harmonics of Gratitude" Guengerich says, "The path I seek moves from mourning what is lost to embracing what can never be lost. It is the way of gratitude . . . Gratitude sounds a note that resonates all around, like the sound of a musical instrument. The fundamental tone of gratitude, once sounded, sets up a sympathetic resonance all around. To be sure: none of us can control the vicissitudes of nature, either for good or for ill. We can put up a good fight if our turn comes, as well we should. But sometimes we or those we love will lose the battle. When that happens, if our hearts are weighted down by the concrete of bitterness and cynicism, then we will surely be dead to the music around us. But the harmonics of gratitude resonate even in, and perhaps especially in, those areas where we feel the most pain."

I listen frequently for the harmonics of gratitude. I hear them straining to sing to me above the dine of stress and resentment and pain. The challenge to us as healers - for that is what all religious people are - is to find and hold on to those things that sustain us and lead us towards health – the memories that can never be lost. Amy Tan reminds us to use our hundred secret senses to know, at deep levels, that there are some things - memories, feelings, experiences - that can never be taken from us. As we share those things, we create our own harmonious hymn to the spirit of life. We make real the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean.