september: forgiveness
monthly theme: [community]
“Sometimes we deceive ourselves and mitigate our sincerity through good intentions. Often, when insecure and off-center, we love in the way we want to be loved. Often, when caught in this way of caring, we think we are answering the needs of others, when in fact we are giving them what we would cry for, if we were in their position. When more centered in ourselves, we tend to truly ask and give what others need.”
- Mark Nepo, “The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life”
To practice community is to constantly look outside of ourselves in order to help ease another’s suffering. But what happens when our own suffering has agitated us into a state in which we cannot clearly see what others might need--what is beyond, within, and in between? From this maladaptive state, our words and actions often misalign with our intention of caring, reducing harm, and understanding the reality of our world.
As last summer’s necessary racial reckoning began to unfold, we were bombarded with ~infographics~ which have their place in hell, but often miss the mark. From our anxieties around being a “bad ally” (an oxymoron), we scramble to learn more, as if knowledge were reparations. Sure, historical, political, and cultural knowledge is part of the work, but if we make and interpret infographics about race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, and disability from the cold-hearted lens of academia or capitalism (the most readily-available perspectives to us), our efforts are going to fall short. So short that intending good, we actually cause harm.
To keep each other safe, we must know what safety feels like in our own bodies. To bear witness to someone else’s suffering, we must have already become intimate with our woes. To offer support, we must know what it feels like to be supported. To be in communion, is to attune to each other, and ultimately a good so great that it is bigger than all of us combined. If our bodies are our homing devices, then we sure as hell better hope they’re calibrated so that when we enter into a shared space, we won’t rattle each other off-course due to our own ignorance and lack of self-awareness.
But this is all rather chicken and the egg; an experiment with each other to show up using our physical reality as a road map and volition for a brighter future as a speedometer. We must stay present with each other long enough to see if intentions come to fruition. Remaining present through conversations in which someone has the love and trust in you to bring up how you’ve hurt them. That is what I believe it means to practice community.
I believe misunderstandings and harboring resentments are the primary reasons why our experiments at connection and supporting each other go awry. To stand firm in this belief, I must also hold true that humans are inherently good and always trying their best...but I’m not asking you to go so far as to live this way with me. It is a privilege to be trusted and to trust without a threat to your safety. But for the sake of digging into “misunderstanding”, “resentments”, and (the reason we’ve gathered this week) “forgiveness,” we must permit that everyone’s underlying intentions are good.
A “misunderstanding” is not simply getting wires crossed, but also includes an inability or reluctance to zoom out. Often when being called to do better in supporting one another, our lizard brains quiver at the idea of being exiled from the pack. We think to be wrong is to be shunned and to be shunned is to be annihilated. I believe our culture wants us to stay in these knee-jerk responses because it’s better for sales, but that seems like a whole other project.
To be misunderstood--to go in well-intentioned and be told you’re causing harm--is not about your ego. It is about a world built in the wombs of broken-promises throughout generations of Americans entering countries, seizing power/resources. It is in the tradition of imperialism that we believe exploiting others is being of service to them.
And resentments often follow...we think they’re the bad guys when they ask us to stop causing harm. The excuse is often, “I was just trying to help!” But how can we be held accountable when our hands are full of resentments? There’s no room. We are so preoccupied with our image of helpfulness and holiness that we neglect our intention in favor of our ego. To preserve our self-image rather than follow through with what we said we were going to do is a rather American pattern written in the margins of our constitution.
I’ve gotten to a place where I now welcome resentments as I feel them creeping up. I hear the jealousy, judgment, and defensiveness and I follow it all the way through until I am back on myself. What am I about to criticize in them that is also true for me? When being called out, I often become defensive due to a deep-seated belief that it is unjust to state your own needs or to ask for harm to be stopped. I, like many of us, was told to just accept what was given to me and now I resent anyone who knows how to speak up when their needs aren’t being met.
We feel entitled to our resentments often because there is a personal wound that they’re trying so desperately to keep hidden. Our culture makes a habit out of keeping us in the entitlement rather than encouraging us to work through the emotions until we weep for our own pain that we keep enacting onto others. It is a much more heartbreaking process to traverse our wounds and take responsibility rather than doubling down on our initial defensiveness. We must allow this process to split us open, revealing all of the instances in which we have lived through examples of the harm we now unintentionally inflict on our communities.
And that’s when we can fall into forgiveness. Because even if we have a solid accountability practice, how can we believe we are forgiven if we cannot forgive ourselves? If we cannot accept how we’ve been split off from the pack in a myriad of sinister ways that our culture passes off as “norms” and mores, we cannot come back into union with ourselves or with the whole. And I really do hate that kind of “either/or” speak; because ultimately, the act of trying to connect and reconnect and unintentionally cause harm and be held accountable and try again and again, is how we reveal and heal these deep, inner wounds. Forgiveness can only be given if we work to obtain it.
They say that communal wounds need to be healed in community, but a community is simply a collection of individuals influencing one another. We enter in as separate, become one through some shared experience, and leave again. What is it that we take with us? And if there is any hint of resentment, how can we forgive ourselves so that we can see when another needs such grace? Forgiveness in terms of community is often about coming to terms with the truth of past, present, and future actions.
To be a good neighbor, you must first allow yourself to live peacefully. A peaceful life can come from seeing resentments for what they really are--unanswered frustrations and sorrows about the harm that has been caused to you. If you’re always trying your best, then it is not your responsibility to judge what your best looks like on any given day. Simply assess your actions and experiment with what might work better for you and whoever you’re in communion with the next time. Hold yourself accountable, see what’s beyond your resentments, and make any amends to yourself and others.