Crushed Violet

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
-Jesus the Christ


Whether one believes Jesus a fraud or God; myth or fact, these, His final words, cry out down the centuries as the highest and noblest of all utterances. Few of us, including the world’s greatest thinkers and philosophers have ascended to such heights or plumbed such depths. Though we greet great forgiveness with great applause and recognition, most of us find it nearly impossible to live it.

What we do understand is vengeance; the inverse of forgiveness. It Is our all-too-human response to physical wounding, emotional suffering, property loss, hurt feelings and even of being short-changed at the cash register. Movies and television glorify, justify and temporarily satisfy us with the balancing of justice-an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. But the story always stops just short of the true ending. What the story does not show is the emptiness of revenge: the loss of integrity, of morality, of humanness. Retribution is foisted on us by a bankrupt society which itself has no conscience or values. It seeks to shape us in its own image; a pale parody of a real human.

So what is forgiveness? Is it denying a feeling of anger at the wrong? Is it letting justice slide and the perpetrator running free and consequenceless? Is it bringing the wrong into memory?

A pastor was wronged. His trusted comrade, in a public meeting, denounced him, calling him a fraud and alleging many untruths about him. The minister was stunned. He did not defend himself; a defense would only have served the purposes of the accuser. He stumbled off the platform, condemned in the eyes of his congregation. He wandered down the street, crying out “Why?” into the silence. Gradually, the words of Christ “Forgive them,” began to penetrate his rage. His anger did not abate, but he began to cry out “I forgive, I forgive.”

Over the following months, the forgiveness became real to his shattered mind. He truly accepted and loved the betrayer.

Then, a year later, the erstwhile friend called him in deepest distress. He himself had been betrayed. The forgiver invited his betrayer into his home and ministered to him for a year—true forgiveness.

From this and other such incidents, including being forgiven myself, I have formulated this definition of forgiveness: Forgiveness is consciously absorbing into oneself, the consequence justly due the perpetrator.

Christ’s murderers deserved death. He took the death. The minister would have been justified in accusing the accuser and working for his ousting. Instead, he loved the man back to full health. I have experienced this kind of forgiveness. It is terrifyingly real; it strikes at the very root cause of all betrayals, poverty, hunger and injustice-the selfish heart of mankind.

Giving and forgiveness; each is an act of generosity flowing from a generous heart. One is a tangible gift; the other an intangible but immeasurably greater gift.

Mark Twain said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance of a violet shed on the heel that crushed it.” In mind's eye, I see one fragile flower growing amid the random flora of a forest glade. A careless hiker, fully shod in hiking boot with swinging walking stick, striding oblivious of his footfall. Just there his heel crushes the flower, releasing onto his boot heel the aroma of its stored and ready perfume of forgiveness. May I so live; armed with forgiveness ready to spread its perfume at each, all and all provocation. Would I truly live that way; would we all live that way, what a happy world we would live in. Forgiveness as a norm would soon destroy poverty and injustice; the intangible would beget the tangible for a world of wounds and a world of need.


11/23/11

An Angry Giver

I am angry. Actually livid is a better word. I am heartbroken. I cringe in shame.

I’ve read my share of and books on our current wars, but none have touched me at the depth and stirred such emotions as Megan Stack’s book Every Man in This Village is a Liar. With horrific near-poetic language she tells stories-stories of her years as an LA Times correspondent in the Middle East. She tells of the terror of a young man and his girlfriend who were spotted and threatened prior to meeting with her. She was never able to contact them again. She tells of the time she spent in Southern Lebanon under the bombing of Israel. A rigged Egyptian election, observed up close and personal, fills another narrative.

My anger, shame and heartbreak are not just for the acts we humans inflict on one another, but for the red, white and blue threads that weave their American patriotic pattern through the stories. In the rigged election, for example, the tear gas canister lobbed at would-be voters said in block letters: “Made in the USA.” We don’t get it that what we do “over there” effects us directly and indirectly. As Ms. Stack says, “One war breeds another war. We create that which we try to kill.1”


You may well ask, “What does this have to do with giving-the stated purpose of this list?” Good question.

My initial response to the book, as I said at the beginning, was a mix of negative emotions. I wanted to do something, change something or somebody; make a difference. I wanted to be against war, I wanted to strike out at injustice and poverty. OK, I’ll be honest. I wanted to hurt somebody or many somebody.

Reality raised its ugly head and said, “And how much of a difference will that make?” I’m only one and not a very action-oriented one at that. What can I do or say that would make any real difference? The one time I wrote my congresspeople about Guantanamo, I received one reply, “I’m on your side in this.” But Guantanamo still exists.

Then the thought came to me, “But at least you’re one.” This was followed by another, “Do what you’re doing-make a little difference; love a little even though you can’t resolve the tensions in the Middle east.”

So I’m going to do the little I’m doing with a little more vigor, a higher sense intent, a desire for an influence bigger than these few words.

May the vast improbability of human greed which spawns wars be brought to its knees by the little Davids throwing their little stones against the weapons of mass destruction which we hurl around the world so freely. May we soften the hearts of those who have come to hate us for our wealth, our arrogance, our naïve assumption of our superiority, our glib pronouncements of simple solutions to complex millennium-long discords, our bully presence around the world. ,

My stone is etched with “Giving.”

1 Every Man in This Village is a Liar, Megan K. Stack P. 227