A Reflection Offered by Rev. Tricia Brennan

“Practicing Forgiveness”

A reflection offered by Rev. Tricia Brennan

FollenCommunityChurch

Lexington, MA

October 2, 2011

I want to start by offering my congratulations to all those involved

in the East Village Fair- that was a wonderful event.

Earlier last week I was talking with Herman Marshall and I said-

so when you offer the welcome and announcements on Sunday, you’ll thank those involved in making the fair happen right?

And Herman looked at me and said-

Trish, I don’t think you really get it-

everyone is involved in making the fair happen.

If I thanked people I might as well

take the directory and start reading it.

Well, yesterday at the fair, when I saw everyone there,

having a great time, things running so smoothly, I got it.

This is one heck of a community event, an amazing labor of love.

With or without the sun, the day shined with the spirit there.

I had a great time, everyone did.

My reflection has no title in the oos.

I find it hard to give a title to that which I’ve not yet written,

and I hadn’t written by oos press time.

So I start now with the title: Practicing Forgiveness

When my daughter was younger,

and she would do something that hurt one of her friends-

a mean word or push or shove, taking a toy, that sort of thing,

my husband and I did not require her to apologize

to the friend whose feelings she had hurt.

It felt forced to us.

I am sure we intervened in some way,

but I remember that we did not tell her she must say she was sorry because we were pretty sure her words would not be genuine

and what good is a phony apology, we thought.

And then another parent said to us-“

but how will she learn to say she is sorry,

how will she learn about forgiveness?”

and we started to rethink the whole forced apology thing.

Some of you, young and older,

may have thoughts on the wisdom of required regrets,

and I’d love to hear them,

especially from those of you young enough

to remember your parents making you say you were sorry.

I’d be curious to hear if you think that helped you or not.

I am thinking that it never gets easy to say we are sorry.

We are always in training, always practicing what it means

to recognize our culpability, to own the injuries we’ve caused others, and to seek amends.

Not a bad idea, really, to start early with the spiritual discipline

of saying aloud the words, I am sorry.

Sorry for what I did, or what I did not do. I was wrong.

We form the words in our mouth, and the words can feel like pebbles, uncomfortable, sharp, awkward, hard to bring to speech,

We say the words as best we can and then what?- We don’t know.

And that is part of the profundity of this work-

we have no control over what will happen next.

There are no guarantees that our words will be heard or accepted,

no certainty that we will hear- “I forgive you, let’s begin again. “

We risk revealing our remorse and our shame,

and have it met with silence or rejection.

It takes courage to do what we ask of 3 year olds on the playground- it takes courage at any age.

As we get older, our grievances against one another

become more complicated.

It is no longer you took my toy,

but you stole my ideas and profited from them,

not as simple as you called me a mean name,

but you spread gossip about me and sullied my name,

not as simple as a playground shove,

but you bullied me and made me afraid for a long time.

Uuism can be overly sunny at times,

emphasizing our goodness and

glossing over our capacity for harm and evil.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters do not make that mistake,

intimately familiar as they are the darker side of human history.

And so they set aside time for reflection during the High Holydays,

which we are in right now.

Each person looking back over the year,

bringing to mind those they may have hurt

and from whom they desire forgiveness.

It is an individual practice that is shared communally.

The sharing reminds us that we all fall short

and that we all are in need of forgiveness.

I think it is very wise to have such a time.

Indeed part of the power of the High Holydays

is that they are time bound- ten days.

And though one can, of course, seek forgiveness

any time during the year, there is a special emphasis in Judaism

to use this time, these days, to seek forgiveness.

I find the 10 days, in their short duration,

to be a reminder that there is an end to every human life.

The truth is that we can run out of time

when it comes to seeking and giving forgiveness.

In the book Tuesdays with Morrie,

Mitch talks with his former teacher Morrie as Morrie is dying.

The importance of forgiving was my question. I wondered if Morrie had any of that inside him, a sudden need to say "I’m sorry" before he died?

Morrie nodded. "Do you see that sculpture?" He tilted his head toward a bust that sat high on a shelf against the far wall of his office. Cast in bronze, it was the face of a man in his early forties, wearing a necktie, a tuft of hair falling across his forehead.

"That’s me," Morrie said. "A friend of mine sculpted that maybe thirty years ago. His name was Norman. We used to spend so much time together. We went swimming. We took rides to New York. He had me over to his house in Cambridge, and he sculpted that bust of me down in his basement. It took several weeks to do it, but he really wanted to get it right."

I studied the face. How strange to see a three-dimensional Morrie, so healthy, so young, watching over us as we spoke.

"Well, here’s the sad part of the story," Morrie said. "Norman and his wife moved away to Chicago, A little while later, my wife, Charlotte, had to have a pretty serious operation. Norman and his wife never got in touch with us. I know they knew about it. Charlotte and I were very hurt because they never called to see how she was. So we dropped the relationship.

"Over the years, I met Norman a few times and he always tried to reconcile, but I didn’t accept it. I wasn’t satisfied with his explanation. I was prideful. I shrugged him off. "

His voice choked. "Mitch . . . a few years ago . . . he died of cancer. I feel so sad. I never got to see him. I never got to forgive. It pains me now so much …"

He was crying again, a soft and quiet cry, and because his head was back, the tears rolled off the side of his face before they reached his lips.

So in the story we hear not just the human desire to seek forgiveness but the very human desire to grant forgiveness.

And the sorrow that comes when we let our fears or our pride

or our hurt cause us to delay and lose the chance to do so.

So if the title of this reflection is Practicing Forgiveness

what does it mean to do that?

Surely it means the obvious-

trying to seek and give forgiveness,

the practice that life presents us.

Can it also mean being aware of what we do and think

that keep us locked in blame,

like the people in the story Debra told who

“even began to feel proud of their grudges and handed them down from generation to generation….”

Perhaps you know this story…

An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life..

.He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

One wolf is evil -- he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.

The other is good---he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and forgiveness.

This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too." They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied: "The one I feed".

We practice forgiveness when we feed the angry wolf only scraps and actively nurse the wolf of forgiveness.

We practice forgiveness when we refuse to perpetuate the illusion that hate can heal our pain and the pain of others.

As practice forgiveness, we create a new beginning.

If this day, this theme of forgiveness awakens in you

a desire to reflect upon your life,

as millions of Jewish men women and children are doing-

or if you find that you are thinking of someone

from whom you wish to seek forgiveness

or you are thinking of someone who you feel ready to forgive,

then I encourage you to go for it.

Our lives are short and none of us wants to regret

what we could have done but didn’t.

I shall join any of you who take this week for reflection or action;

let us be in spiritual solidarity with one another.

As you leave the service today, some of the youth of the church

will hand you a clementine, a sweet fruit.

This is to symbolize the sweetness of this season.

And to remind us of the sweetness that comes when we lay down our burdens of resentment and forgive. Let us not miss this sweetness.