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Forgiveness

In 1989, I attended synagogue on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, in Israel. I was invited by an American family to babysit, to take their child home when she became too restless to stay. They belonged to one of the only conservative synagogues in Israel. The toilet paper was torn ahead of time and the lamps were on a timer. As we walked to the synagogue, the profound silence was cathartic to me. The cessation of traffic was highlighted by the serious and yet joyful mood.  The women dressed in white fluttered in the women’s balcony like doves, the children were free to wander among the men praying downstairs, the sounds of plaintive Kol Nidrei wafted up like smoke from a celestial fire drenching us in holiness. Although I couldn’t understand all of the Hebrew, I could follow along in the prayer book as we enumerated our sins and asked to be covered by God’s merciful forgiveness.

The High Holy Days are a time of repentance in the sense of self-reflection, to consider harm you may have done to others and ask their forgiveness before God opens to your page in the book of life  at the end of Yom Kippur. I loved the fact that we asked for forgiveness as a congregation, that we were part of a ritual cleansing as well as personal evaluation. The community supported us as we declared those sins, those choices and decisions where we missed the mark, aloud. This year I read Michael Lerner’s additions to the traditional prayers  in Tikkun Magazine and was astounded by their clarity, admitting to sins of social injustice as well as the more personal sins of slander and lying, not looking out for others, neglecting our obligation to act as responsible members of a community.

Last year I taught a writing workshop at Stillwater prison for the purpose of holding a reading during Victim Awareness week. We entered this exploration together. They wanted to hold a reading to express their remorse and I would do whatever I could to help them make that possible, to write stories and poems that were well crafted, thoughtful, and honest.

I told them, “You can’t just write a letter of apology and expect to be forgiven. Your victim may never be able to forgive—but if I were a victim, I would want to know how you have changed. How you are different now and would never commit that crime again. I want to know about the work you have done on yourself.” The word I used is metanoia, literally with-mind, to find mindfulness which is translated in the RSV New Testament as repentance. To me, the concept of metanoia goes beyond repentance, it means that you have changed. That you would never commit that crime again because you are not the same person that you were.

As a victim, it can be a long hard road to healing. It can take years. It can take forever. I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to guide me through the trauma and tell a new story of survival and strength. After years of silence about my rape, I was finally able to speak about it, write about it, read my writings aloud at an exhibition through the MN State Arts Board called The Art of Recovery. I also have written about it in both memoirs Flowers in the Wind and To Catch a Dream, hopefully to find publishers someday. And yet, my impulse was to forgive the man who perpetrated the rape immediately after it happened because during the four hours he held me captive, I listened to his story. I knew he was a victim as well and that the violation he was pouring out onto my body were the results of his own abuse, humiliation and anger. It is not an excuse. I don’t believe forgiveness needs to include forgetting. However, I remember with compassion for both of us.

A few years ago I attended a Radical Forgiveness workshop led by Rev. Sher McNeal. We formed a circle and she read questions such as “Have you ever been hurt, ever been unkind to someone?”  “Have you ever been bullied,  have you ever bullied someone?” The acts of unkindness, abuse, violence mentioned became more and more specific. We were instructed that if we were either victim or perpetrator, to step into the middle of the circle. Then she asked us to look each other in the eyes and say, “I am sorry that happened to you”. No one knew who was victim or perpetrator. Rather we witnessed that with each question, some of us stood in the middle of that circle together.  Sorrow and forgiveness included all of us. Remorse included all of us. Forgiveness included all of us. Kinda like Yom Kippur. A covering over us of Divine Mercy.

After my Restorative Justice class, I felt that I would like to lead a class of victims and perpetrators, although not  from the same crime as I am not a therapist but a devoted writer who has used writing for healing through my own intuition. However, it was interesting to me to realize I would not want to face my own perpetrator in a workshop, no matter how genuine his intentions were to make restitution. I know he went to prison and I have no desire to be in any form of contact.

The work I needed to do was on myself:  the crime was a wake up call because at the time I was far away from living my own integrity, spiritual life and values and that I needed to remember self respect. I had to heal the belief and guilt that if I had been  attentive, I would not have been a target. He had told the court, “I picked her because she was the kind of girl who would never have a man like me.” At the time, I was recovering from rejection and was hanging out with  gay men because I felt safe and comfortable; they pampered me.

If my perpetrator had entered the Radical Forgiveness circle with me, would I have been able to look him in the eyes and say I am sorry that happened to you? Would we be able to weep together over his life wasted in prison and my years of PDST and distancing myself from relationships? Would we be covered by the mercy of God? I like to think it could be so. 

Coming Home to Joy

Eight years ago if you had told me that I would be able to survive, I would have looked at you in disbelief. If you had predicted that I would find ways to heal, I would have been astonished. After my son's death, I could only put one foot in front of the other, day by day. I had tremendous love from friends and family and support from colleagues and counseling and yet, I was in such a state of shock that I was operating on instincts, not rational, not able to foresee any future at all.

My instincts told me to go back to work, that it was better than the agony of my own turbulent guilt, and I did until the wheel of fortune took me to Mexico and Alejandro. My instincts told me to hold onto Alejandro, who was both a distraction and a refuge. He knew how to live on a pendulum between deep denial and enjoying life's sensual pleasures. I knew he would not pity me, but in fact, one of the last straws between us was the way he demanded I show up to work at the gallery when I had dengue fever and should have been in bed recuperating, with a kind hand bringing me cool drinks and Tylenol.

Seven years ago when I moved to Minneapolis, if you had told me that I would find ways to meld my gift with my passion to be of service, I would not have believed you, even though my hunger for poetry had come back. Coming to Minneapolis was another turn of the wheel of fortune: my son asked for my help with childcare. I used to claim I would never live in such a cold place. Here I still am, 7 years later.

That first winter, I attended a poetry reading at The Loft for the publication release of Songs Along the Way. I remember it because the temperature was 20 below and I asked my daughter-in-law to give me a ride. I assumed there would be a small turn out. I was still disoriented, in an altered state, and raw with grief that felt like my skin of my heart had peeled away. I was surprised to watch the auditorium fill up but despite standing room only, the seat next to me remained vacant. Was it Sam's spirit come to comfort me? I left that reading to go home and write my first poem since leaving Mexico.

Five years ago if you had predicted that I would create a life I love, I would have seen a small glimmer through the fog. I would have considered the Twin Cities writer's community as a place to begin. I created brochures and sent out proposals, showed up for open mics and asked questions, attended every reading I could get to. Won a McKnight grant, published a book of poetry.

Three years ago if you had told me that I would feel joy, astounding joy that permeates my entire being, the joy of doing what I am meant to do, of  using my gift and my desire and my vision, that I would heal, I would have been astonished. I would not have been able to imagine it. But joy has been gifted me, I feel blessed.

Sam's death is not something I got over or ever forget. If I choose to hold the moment of getting the phone call in my mind, or seeing his body at the funeral home, or the afternoon at the Chama where we scattered his ashes, the visceral reaction is as potent as ever. Sharp unbearable pain shoots through my heart. In the poem I wrote a description of my grandson, "When he smiles, it is enough to crack the scotch-taped fissures of my heart back into shards. It is your smile, carbon copy family trait." These memories are enough to crack all the fissures back into shards. The fissures that I have spent the last seven years filling in with gold lacquer, painstakingly matching each surface to the other to resemble the whole.

Poetry performances for Dia de los Muertos where I shared my anguish, poetry performance at Patrick's Cabaret where I told the story also healed me as I realized that death comes for all, death is part of the cycle of life. Death is natural. Sam's death was a choice he made and I can choose the way I mourn, publically and privately.

What I learned as a writing instructor/facilitator is that when I write, there are two paths. One will take me deeper and deeper into the story: what happened to me and what I feel about it. There is no end to that branch of the story. I can tell it over and over, because the emotional pull is powerful. Or I can choose another branch: what it means, what patterns I see, where it leads me, what has been the lesson, and how I can change and transform because of it. And as the writer responsible for the circle, I deliberately choose that branch. That is what I write about and share. When I led workshops under the funding of the grant, writing with battered women and homeless youth and heart patients and care-givers, I was writing weekly or twice weekly and choosing that path over and over again. What does it mean to me, what did I learn, where do I find inner courage and strength, what do I still have, what are my blessings? And I began to heal, not only enough to keep going, not only enough to be engaged with laughter and friendship and love and curiosity and pleasure, but real joy. An inner knowing that I am where I am meant to be, that I am living my dreams, that I am connected to others in deep ways and that I love my life. I am blessed. I am grateful.

If you had told me even last year, that I would be overwhelmed with ecstatic bliss, that I would dance again under the Mexican moon, that I would be filled with Presence of Spirit and that I would be overcome with love, I would have been incredulous. This joy is beyond any previous experience I have ever had. Beyond when I fell in love, when I gave birth, when I sat in a Spanish cafe and listened to flamenco, when I celebrated with friends, when I held my first book in my hands, when I spoke my truth on stage and was held in the arms of my audience. This joy is a state of being. I have come home to myself after long years of wandering. Like Dorothy clicking together her ruby slippers and saying No place like home. It is the center towards which I have been traveling all my life. While I am here, I know I can always return. Whenever grief or disappointment or frustration or longing knock me off-kilter, I know it is here, waiting for me, invincible, mine.

There are many forms of death by Kevin Hershey, writer in Writing Circles for Healing workshop

There are many different forms of death

 

There’s the death of the bright yellow tulips

brought to my grandmother on Easter Sunday

already browning in their vase by Tuesday.

The death she awaits, as her green eyes grow foggier

each day staring toward the ceiling, looking for the place she knows she will go next.

This will be the death of the last immigrant

death when her green eyes close

and cease to reflect the green hills and gray seas of her home

and death of the stories she might never have told us.

 

There’s death in the piles of unread newspapers by her entry

faceless, nameless, technicolor death in oil-rich nations or marathon massacres.

Death was in the brown leaves that crumpled on the grass last fall

buried beneath a blanket of snow

only to resurface this spring, wet.

There was the death of that deer on Highway 61

who dashed out of the woods

and now she’s crawling with flies.

Hundreds of deaths all over the windshield

smudges obliterated by sprinkling skies

above the lakes next to the road.

Sometimes we call death

passing or crossing over or moving on

when it’s really just death

but sometimes it isn’t death at all

 

My hair was already dead

when it fell off my head

as chemotherapy caused the death of me from the inside out

a million little deaths in my cells that I could not even imagine

The backyard compost was full of death

when I scattered it with black shiny locks

greening orange peels,

the slimy pieces of onions we carelessly discarded,

old autumn leaves,

coffee grounds from many mornings ago.

My dead hair mixed with our dead waste.

It made a bed for next year’s tulips.        

Kevin Hershey returned to his hometown of St. Paul after completing college last year. Currently, his life is dedicated to full-time soul searching.

There's the Light (Writing Circles for Healing workshop participant)

                                        There's the Light from My Grandbaby

                  There's the light from her smile that greets me each time she enters the room.

                  The light of morning that moves on her face like invisible eyes blinking.

                  The light from her eyes as blue as the ribbon tied in a bow around her white face.

                  There's the light from her laugh that makes me a child after she wails and cries then

                  stops as if she was saying, I fooled you again.

                  There's the light from Van Gogh and Cezanne so perfectly arranged it moves my

                  blood to boil in my heart and sends little bubbles up my spine                                                                                                

                  and stimulates my mind for creations that I create.

                  The light from the moon that spreads in holy halos from its edge.

                  There's the light vanilla smell that emanates from her cheek against mine as we 

                  wrestle for the toys. 

                  There's the heat within the sun like the heat from her hands as she hugs my neck.

                  

                  There's the light through the shattered windshield after the wreck.

                  The light of winter’s skies, gray and still as the casket’s canopy.

                  There's the light reflections off my broom faced wrinkles as they gather as my mind

                  grows old and holes perforate my brain and block the memories of her.

                  There's the red light from a cat’s eye the in middle of the night Edgar Allen Poe.

                   There's the absence of light below the earth where the bugs and spiders clean the bones.

                   There's the empty light without her, without god, without soul, just an animal waiting for death.

                   There's the holy light of belief that relieves me as I lay down for my last sleep.

                Also, there's the light of god seen through the tunnel 
 that beckons me to her and to heaven 
 and to all my missing relatives and friends 

 that fly together on wings

 of wind to a better dimension of time and space.

Mark's statement: In '98 I contracted a serious case of colon cancer so I moved back here to be with my family.  After many months of treatment, the cancer went into remission; there has not been any since. In 2001 I was accidentally shot with a large caliber rifle and spent  months in the hospital near death many times. It has taken me 50 operations and 7 to 8 years pulling myself back together fighting chronic pain and infections. It is a story in itself of fighting through physical and mental trauma. I was always an artist ever since I was 5 or 6 when my brother and I started to draw to escape an alcoholic father and poverty.  I was always the best artist in the class and was chosen to do murals and art projects for the class. Through the years I've spent my time painting and writing poetry and short stories

 Mark East was a participant in Writing Circles for Healing presented by Wendy Brown-Baez and held at the Wellstone Center in St Paul. Wendy Brown-Báez is a fiscal year 2012 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008

  

Artist Initiative grant

I have about 6 weeks left of writing workshops sponsored by the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant.  In April I will be at Springhouse Spiritual Center where I will lead a class in Spiritual Memoir and Saint Louis Park Friends of the Arts creative writing circle.

This month, I am at Abbot Northwestern Hospital Heart Institute support group on Mondays, The Bridge for Youth on Wednesdays, Writing Circles for Healing at The Wellstone Center on Thursdays, and back at Stillwater DOC on Fridays although this is not part of the grant. I also am presenting a free training session for advocates, social workers, healers and therapists to demonstrate my technique at Cornerstone on April 6.

Each workshop has been unique and I have discovered what works and what doesn't. The youth at The Bridge may enter the room with an attitude of resistance (what? another group we have to attend?) but after a couple of rounds of writing, reading and realizing that they are free to speak their minds and not be judged, they want to participate. Unfortunately, by then, it is time for their next activity. But I have heard heart-breaking and affirming poems and stories as they move forward into self-awareness and standing up for themselves.

The women at Harriet Tubman were enthused and the program director told me it led to conversations with others about themselves and why they were at Harriet Tubman,  opening up as they shared their stories and their wisdom. Breaking patterns of addictive behavior and leaving abusive situations can be a long hard road. I suggested that they post the affirmations we wrote in a place where they could be reminded that they are headed towards wholeness.

At our first session at Cornerstone, one woman had a deep reluctance to share but agreed to allow me to read her words. As I did, she wept and the other women assured her that she was on the path to self-awareness and healing. The hurts these women have endured are hard to write about and yet, to admit that they have been hurt is necessary for the healing to begin. A break due to President's day threw off our rhythm but the writer who persevered is filling up notebook after notebook.

The workshop at the library had a different focus as writers wanted to work on writing skills. We discussed setting, character, and plot. One of my favorite prompts is to write about an ordinary activity and then have something unexpected happen. Or to detail a character doing an ordinary activity in public and then have another character approach with a secret that they feel compelled to confide. How does the first character react?

At Banfill-Locke, many of the 14 participants had been primed by taking Julian's Drawing by Intuition class, already connected to their creative imagination. I am always amazed at how a prompt can elicit so many different responses. "I am going to start living"....from Edward Hirsch's poem "I am going to Start Living Like a Mystic" led me to write:
I am going to start living as if the past is a bucket of stars. I can take each out and decide to put it on a shelf, paste it on the ceiling, or return it to the bucket. I'm going to start living as if each failure, each dead end, each detour was intentional experimentation....

At The Wellstone Center, I have the most unusual group I have ever worked with: all men. It is the first time this has ever happened to me, most workshops are filled with women!

The Saint Paul Almanac community editors workshop was the most exciting. We did the timeline exercise and heard brief stories from each participant, testimonies to the courage and determination and resiliency of the human spirit. At The Bridge for Youth, one young man said he didn't have anything to write about and I reminded them that we each have a story. As one famous writer said, if you have lived to be seven years old, you have enough material to write about for the rest of your life. But those I am working with have big stories: stories of immigration, abandonment and rejection, life on the street, escaping abuse, finding new direction, pursuing education, pursuing healthy choices, overcoming poverty, racism, and someone else's opinion of who you should be.

I give my writers permission to be honest on the page, permission to write badly, permission to pursue what comes up from their subconscious. As Natalie Goldberg says, go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary...it has lots of energy.) This is where the juice is, the passion that will ignite your writing. Writing is a practice, I tell them, just like any art. You need to practice to get better. And the more you practice, the better you will get. It is also work. Writing will break you open, make you see things you weren't aware of, show you a reflection of your heart and soul.

At Abbot, we wrote about what we yearn for and I found myself writing about peace: peace in the Middle East, peace in North Minneapolis, peace between my grandsons, a theme that has always been important to me and yet one I haven't tackled lately. For homework, I asked them to write to their hearts. I can't wait to hear the dialogue they create with their hearts. Then I will use the prompt from this: 

If anyone strike my heart, it does not break, but it bursts, and the flame coming out if it becomes a torch on my path. --Hazrat Inayat Khan

There’s a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put scriptures on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts,and not in them?” the rabbi answered, “Only God can put scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.” 

--Anne Lamont in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

What is written on your heart?

What is the flame that lights your path?

 

Wendy Brown-Báez is a fiscal year 2012 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. These activities are funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008.

 

 

 

 

writing in a group

A few week-ends ago I led a writing workshop as part of Celebrate Yourself week-end women's retreat. The Saturday workshop was a writing circle for healing and Sunday's I call Spiritual Tune Up. The process of writing circles is simple: we read a poem, write spontaneously, then read what we have written without critiquing. All comments must consist of positive feed-back. The purpose of this is to quiet the left brain critic who tells us we can't write or that we're not good enough or what will the others think? The Judge, the Critic, or the child who was criticized for her creativity, this part of ourselves that watches us without tolerance or amusement at our efforts, not to mention never praises us for taking a risk, is calmed. Reading what we have written aloud is a risk; we feel vulnerable and sensitive and courageous. I acknowledge that.

Sunday's workshop starts with a meditation and uses poems with a spiritual slant to inspire us.

I have learned through the years of leading workshops to trust the process. Natalie Goldberg says go for what is rich with emotion, go for what you feel reluctant to say, go for the material that is hardest to write. Sometimes what we begin with: an image, a memory, a feeling, is not at all where we end up.

This week-end, someone thoughtfully brought along a box of kleenex, because as we opened our hearts, we needed it. There were losses and griefs that were heart-wrenching, there were stories of self-denial and fears of not being enough, not being held as precious and beloved. And as well, as I used prompts that focused on our blessings and our passions, there was laughter and remembrance of our innate worthiness. We honored our wholeness within our pain and brokenness.

Remembering is important for me, too. One line came into my head as I wrote: What would it be like to look up to myself?

I know the stories we are compelled to share are sometimes the ones we don't feel safe enough to share. How many of us have taken a writing workshop only to feel ripped to shreds by a critique that ignores the hard work we did to capture our deepest longings, our deepest despair, our deepest truth, the rent in the fabric of our daily lives that can lead to transformation and transcendence if we follow the frayed thread and not give up too soon?

It was a blessing for me to be in the circle, a circle that becomes sacred time and space as we articulate in our fumbling words, in our genius words, who we are and what has happened to us. The shortest bridge between two people is a story and I listen to yours and hold it close to me.