Must it Be?

Must it always be the flesh of the innocent

To awaken us from time seduction

And bring us vividly to the grace of the present?

--from John Schuler of Kildaire, Illinois, read by Curator and Poet Holly Bass on NPR's Tell Me More, April 18, 2013.

Yesterday while police in Boston were closing in on the Boston marathon bombing suspects, my husband and I were digging holes for shrubs.  We did not read or watch the news.  We were not ready.  Violence is so indigestible. 

Violence is a familiar companion in life, and inevitable, like disappointment and illness.  We know this truth but we resist it, sometimes to the point of denial.  We don't have to go to the holocaust for proof of deliberate denial of human horrors.  We can pull from our own personal histories.  The man beating a woman in the alley beneath an apartment window.  The neighbor slamming his three year old against a garage wall.  The student assaulting a teacher in her classroom with a knife at 6AM.   The rapist climbing over the balcony and into the apartment on a bright spring morning.

"This can't be happening. Go back to sleep," I thought, when I heard the woman screaming and the trash cans crashing.  And I did.  I went back to sleep.  In the morning, they were gone but the alley was littered with trash.

"I should call the police.  That father is abusing his son, " I said.  My listener advised, "Don't get involved.  You don't know for sure."  I did eventually call the police but waited far too long.

The teacher felt safe. The school doors were locked.  She was well-liked.  The morning was young.  Her assailant appeared suddenly.  She fended him off with her bare hands, grabbing the knife blade and screaming for help.  Schools are quiet places at 6AM; help came slowly.  She would never be able to forget the incident.  She tried to resume her teaching career, to overcome her fears, but it was impossible:  Scars covered her hands and arms.  I convinced myself I was safe; it didn't happen to me; it wouldn't happen to me.  Then one day a female student attacked me and tried to get me to react while I backed out of a door way.  I called for help.  No one came.  The student called her mother and grandmother and accused me of choking her.  "This couldn't be happening to me," I thought.  But it did.

The young woman was alone in her apartment.  The dogwoods were blooming outside her second story bedroom window, the luscious creamy blossoms an invitation to a glorious day that never happened for her, not for days or months afterwards.  Although she lived on a busy downtown city street where sirens were as common as chirping birds in the morning, she had never considered it unsafe to open the balcony sliding glass doors for fresh air.  "It wouldn't happen to her."   But it did.

I once spent a year studying genocide.  I looked for clues into how human beings, needful of love and affection and capable of charity, could with deliberate determination march people into excavated ditches and mow them down in mass. Evil apparently resides dormant in all of us and can burst from us when confronted with the right stress ingredients -- chemically, biologically, psychologically, culturally.  Humans are capable of irrational craziness.   In spite of compelling evidence from history and life, I resist this truth -- even though I myself have done some nutty things when under stress, nothing unredeemable, mind you, but certainly momentarily irrational.

From reading Elie Wiesel's Night, Romeo Daillaire's Shake Hands with the Devil, Immaculee Ilibagiza's Led by Faith, and Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell, I gained this much:  we have the power within us to react to violence with amazing courage and creative resistance.  Our spirits have the resilience of both passive and active survival and reconstruction.  Wiesel could not prevent the holocaust but he could narrate its truth and how love survived although drenched with hate.  Daillaire could not prevent Rwandan genocide but he could resist the pulling of United Nations forces from Rwanda.  Ilibagiza survived for a year in a locked bathroom under the protection of a courageous man while machete wielding boy soldiers terrorized her ethnic group and searched for her. Powers drew upon her experience as a correspondent to show how individuals risked careers and lives to get the United States government to act against human rights abuses. 

I'd like to think all of us act with courage for peace daily, in ways we take entirely for granted.  We don't yell at one another.  We accept our failings and forgive one another.  We feed one another.  We share. We take turns at stop signs.  We work for improvement in ourselves, our families, and our community.  

When the Boston marathon bombing happened, we could not digest its senseless horror.  So we worked in our yard to plant a tree and six shrubs.  Herb dug for ten minutes while I rested in a chair; then I dug while he rested.  One hole, webbed with three inch roots from a removed red bud tree, had to be twenty inches deep and wide.  We used a bishops spade, an adz, a post hole digger, and a chain saw.  Ivy and rocks interfered, and fatigue.  But we got it done.

This morning we were finally prepared to digest the ongoing news of the aftermath of the Boston bombings.  The manhunt is on, one suspect dead, the other on the run.  The net closes tighter and tighter.  The vision is horrifying, police in protective gear with assault weapons drawn, neighbors hiding indoors.  Fear reigns, creepy and all-consuming, like a raging fever.

This afternoon Herb and I will dig up some shrubs and replant them.  It's one of the things we can do until the fever subsides. And it takes us "vividly to the grace of the present."

Resources

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/18/177765547/tell-me-more-wants-your-poetry

Psalm 30

Romans 8:38-39

Please Forgive Me

“ When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered. That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth.
- Tyler G. Okimoto, researcher at the University of Queensland
From http://www.npr.org/2013/04/01/175714511/why-not-apologizing-makes-you-feel-better

Friends and I have been discussing the above quote and NPR feature on apologizing. The resulting discussion prompted me to write about apologies and forgiveness. I invite you to read the linked article and respond on my blog, on my Facebook Page, or in an email.

..........

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold”
― William Carlos Williams


In the spring of the first year of my second marriage, I failed to pay our light bill. The consequences are unforgettable. The utility company cut off our electricity and stuck a notice to our front door. Herb came home from work at 3 o'clock to find the garage door wouldn't open, the computer wouldn't power up, and the bathroom light wouldn't switch on. Since he had come in the back door, he missed the notice on the front door. Thinking a transformer had blown, he called the utility company.

While Herb was discovering we didn't have any electricity and then driving to the utility company to pay the bill, I was leading a curriculum workshop for 70 faculty members at Warren East High School in the school cafeteria. Floor to ceiling glass covered one cafeteria wall. Around 5 o'clock someone told me Herb was outside in the hallway. I saw him through the glass. He was pacing back and forth and slapping a piece of paper against his thigh. He was mad as hell!

For two months, at school and home, I'd been buried in paper. I'd taken on too many responsibilities, had moved professional priorities ahead of domestic ones, and neglected our finances. The light bills got lost in the shuffle.

I apologized, but the apology felt inadequate. The cliche "I felt like a worm" is apt. A silence descended upon our happy home. I avoided his eyes and spent the evening sorting through every stack of paper in my study. I feared another bill might have slipped my attention. Besides, I needed something to do while I nursed my guilt.

In this case my apology needed to be linked to solutions. I wanted to feel forgiven, but I also needed to fix the problem. Herb began sorting the mail for us and filing the bills, a job he's done perfectly for twenty-one years. I eventually resigned from my curriculum duties and reduced my professional load. When online bill paying became available, I quickly signed on.

What if I had said, "I'll fix it," but never apologized? According to Tyler Okomoto my self -esteem would have been enhanced by thinking, "I'm NOT sorry," and further enhanced by not saying, "I'm sorry."

I used to tell my children, "Don't apologize; fix the problem." I believed that apologies without solutions were wasted rhetoric.

If their grades dropped, I expected a nose to the grindstone solution. If one of them missed a curfew, I expected a show of sacrifice: every evening at home for a week. Penitence was more important than apologies.

Today, if my husband loses his temper with me, I expect him to apologize, but he's a fixer. "I'll take care of it," he says. And he does.

One of my dear friends, now gone, always said to me, "Forgiveness was forgetting." She convinced me by her actions and words that whatever wrong had passed between us was completely forgotten. I can't begin to tell you how comforting her approach was to me, the master of ruminating remorse.

Another friend mastered the fine art of communicating with only our best selves, so much so that I rarely felt any apologies were necessary. I'd always wished she hadn't told me about her breast cancer at a restaurant. The roar of customer voices felt like a tsunami wave in my head. I felt like ice water had been poured over me. I couldn't swallow. I became dizzy and nauseous. But I never let on. I didn't want her to feel as if she needed to apologize. I learned later that she had tried to tell me her diagnosis in other settings, but I was immersed in the business of divorce and not tuned to her needs. She preempted my apology with her understanding.

However, as I've aged, I've encountered situations that cannot be easily understood or repaired. The solutions seem obscure or may require cooperation from another person. What if someone apologizes for words misspoken or for unkind or rude behavior, but the situation fails to heal? Or what if I apologize but don't feel forgiven? I am at a loss when this happens, dumbstruck. I feel responsible for the healing and frustrated when my efforts fail.

Here's where an ironic loop happens: We might feel inadequate because we had apparently failed with convincing forgiveness or apology, unlike my friend who led me to believe all was forgotten. We might fail at accepting a dear one's foibles, unlike my friend who understood and forgave my preoccupations before I was aware of any slights. We might suffer from so much guilt, we cannot free ourselves even with an apology. We might harbor hidden resentments and fears. Or we might not know the words to say and simply choke.

In loving others we want to be strong and humble, unselfish and kind, sympathetic and generous, reliable and consistent. We fail often. How much should we apologize for our preoccupations and inadequacies?

A steady stream of I'm sorry seems weird, don't you think?

And yet, I watched a simple apology between two friends that completely defused a potential argument when he said to her, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand the situation." Suddenly she felt badly for him; he was so earnest.

She also does a believable job of apologizing. She's self-deprecating, witty, and sincere. In apologizing to me, she's caused me to want to comfort and reassure her. I can't bear for her to be sad or to feel guilty.

We have lots of help on the topic of apologizing. A google search on Barnes and Noble's website produced over 3,000 titles with the word apology in them, including various versions of Plato's Apology, Mitt Romney's No Apology: Believe in America, Tony Danza's I'd like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had, and Gary Chapman's and Jennifer Thomas' The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships.

The topic is ancient and ever fresh.


“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Plato, The Republic

Matthew 6:12: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”
― Mother Teresa

1 Corinthians 13:4-8: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away."

“True forgiveness is when you can say, "Thank you for that experience.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“Never forget the nine most important words of any family-
I love you.
You are beautiful.
Please forgive me.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr. From Life's little Instruction Book


If you stayed with this post and reached these last lines, you've reached the essential core beneath all of my thoughts:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

― C.S. Lewis

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Revisited

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is visiting this week. Think small dog, not music. Wolfgang, a little white fluffy Havana Silk, is currently curled up on a leather ottoman just inches from me. He is taking his midday nap, having worn himself out walking in the yard, barking at the cable repairman, and objecting to the tree trimmer.

Last night Wolfgang's owners, a daughter, her husband, and two children, texted us to see how Wolfgang was adjusting to their absence. "Was he moping?"

At that moment, their precious puppy was curled up on an afghan on the sofa and looking thoroughly relaxed. He had had a busy day, following us around in the yard, watching squirrels, and barking at birds. The laundry had provided additional entertainment: socks, socks, and more socks. I learned to hide my reading glasses and put waste baskets up on counters. When he evaluated favorably the club chairs in the living room, we had a come-to-Jesus meeting.

"He definitely misses you," I said. Little fibs are okay for the right reasons.

For over thirty years, we have resisted dog ownership, not that we don't appreciate dogs.

I adore well trained dogs. Puppies cuddle and act silly. Dogs listen to inane chatter as if it mattered and love to take neighborhood walks, activities my husband escapes at the first hint. Dogs are improved door bells: they announce friend and foe as soon as they come near the property, a perfect solution for weak knocks and broken doorbells.

Herb, on the other hand, being a practical man, has a ready list of negative dog traits. All dogs begin as needy puppies. Puppies wet carpet and chew furniture legs. A puppy cries in the night, so you must sleep with your arm dangling over the mattress and your hand on the little guy when the ticking clock in the heating pad fails to calm him. And all cute puppies grow up to become dogs.

A dog listens with selective ears: it won't come when called; then you must chase it down. While chasing Fido, we are likely to trip over a hole in the yard, twist a knee, and end up in surgery.

A dog doesn't travel well. Although at our age, we must stop and relieve ourselves every two hours, we don't have to be leashed and led to an approved area. When we arrive at our destination, we don't have to apologize for having arrived as humans who need feeding and bodily function breaks at regular intervals, plus opportunities to voice our joys and fears; whereas to bring our precious pet, we would need to market its positive traits: its predictable and easy feeding habits -- two bowls for the duration, one for water and one for dried food -- and its polite housebroken behaviors -- a steady stare at a green space in the back yard and pleading eyes. We would also need to extol our dog's congenial, social skills, in spite of the fact that our dog would likely jump up to lick our hostess's face or sniff inappropriately.

Since dogs bark indiscriminately at the trash man, the neighbor's three year old grandson, and dear friends, not to mention all cats, squirrels, birds, and other dogs, I'm uncertain how to spin this behavior. How about, Wolfgang is talkative like me? I've been known to wake Herb up in the middle of the night for lesser reasons than "The house is on fire!" or "Someone is rattling the back door!" We all speak indiscriminately: Herb frequently interrupts my business to say, "Look! a white squirrel!" or "A red breasted, purpled beaked, triple tailed woodpecker in the Oak!"

Here's his clincher: Dog's die. You fall in love with them. They follow you everywhere, keep you company when no one else will, and tolerate what people won't: being left at home in a cage for hours and berated for something they didn't do. And then they die after only ten or twelve years. Over our lifetime, to always have a dog would mean we would have to fall in love and grieve more than six times, counting from age ten.

Wolfgang doesn't know about all these objections to his species. He's perfectly content to follow Herb outside at six every morning and later to chew on Herb's cap and my socks. He sits to beg for treats and climbs into my lap when I'm reading. When I play classical music, he smiles. At night he crawls into his crate and falls sound asleep. (The crate is in our bedroom where I put it when he whimpered about feeling lonely his first night.)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be going home soon. His family will sweep in, embrace him, coo over him, and leave us to adjust to his absence. We will regain the leather ottoman and two square feet of walking space in the bedroom. I will return to walking myself and silencing my thoughts. I wonder if Herb will miss tossing his white cap at "Hey Dog," his name for Wolfgang, and sitting with Hey Dog's head on his thigh. Without Wolfgang's barking, the house might seem too quiet for awhile. Still we don't have to be concerned about falling in love and then grieving an absence. Or do we?