Jewish High Holy Days
Song #1023 Building Bridges
What if Nobody Forgave?
In a land far away, a wise . . . (person) who knew a great deal about people because (she/)he traveled from place to place arrived at a strange village. In this town all the people were carrying what seemed to be great bundles on their backs. They couldn"t look around very well, and they never looked up because of the heavy burdens they carried.
Puzzled, the wise (one) finally stopped a young fellow. "My good man, I am a stranger to your land and am fascinated by these large bundles you all carry about but never seem to put down. What is their purpose?" "Oh, these," answered the young fellow in a matter-of-fact way. "These are our grudges." "My," said the wise (one), "that"s a lot of grudges to collect at your age!" "Oh, they"re not all mine. Most of them were passed down in my family." The young fellow heaved a weary sigh. "See that man over there? I have quite a load of grudges against his family. His great, great grandfather called mine a horse thief when they both wanted to be elected mayor." The wise (one) looked around, and shook his(/her) head sadly. "You all look so unhappy. Is there no way to get rid of these burdens?" "We"ve forgotten how," said the young fellow, shifting his load a little. "You see, at first we were proud of our grudges. Tourists came from miles around. But after a few years, Grudgeville became a dreary place. Nobody came. And we had forgotten how to stop holding our grudges." "If you really want to get rid of those grudges," said the wise one, I think I know five magic words that will do the trick." "You do?" asked the fellow hopefully. "That would be a miracle. I"ll go and have the mayor call the people of Grudgeville together." And off he went, as fast as his grudges would let him.
The mayor lost no time in calling the people to the village square. The mayor and the wise (one) stood on a platform where they could see all the hunched-over villagers. When the people had quieted down, the mayor said, "Good people of Grudgeville, a wonderful thing has happened! A very wise stranger has come into o ur town (who will tell us) the magic words that will rid us of these grudges we have carried for generations. How many of you would like to be able to straighten up, have your grudges disappear, look at the world in a whole new way? Listen to the wise words of our visitor, then, and do as (they) say." "My friends, these are simple words, yet some people find them hard to say," said the wise stranger. "I think you have the courage to speak them. The trick is that you must say them to each other and truly mean them. The first two words are, I"m sorry. Can you say them? The other three are, I forgive you. Can you say that? Now say these words to each other."
There was a long pause, then a low grumble from the townspeople. First one person, and then another, said the words. Soon they were all saying them to each other -- quietly at first and then louder. And then=2 0-- would you believe it? Just like the wise (one) predicted, the grudges disappeared! What joy there was in the town. People were heard saying, "Look how those trees have grown!" and "Is that you, JIm? How good to see your face!" There was dancing in the streets that day, and it wasn"t long before the mayor changed the name of the town to Joyville. (Barbara Marshman) In part, these Days of Awe, as they are called, offer us a way to put down the weights of our grudges. We begin again. I think the Jewish tradition shows its brilliance in setting aside holy days each year devoted to self-reflection, to taking responsibility for those of our actions which have caused damage, to making amends and seeking reconciliation. To reflecting upon those who have hurt us and taking steps to find peace with what happened, within ourselves and as it relates to the other person.
What if nobody forgave? Not only would we lug around backpacks full of the heaviness of our grievances, real and perceived, at some cost to ourselves, but also many of us would seek revenge. Revenge wants to see the one who did harm suffer as he/she made us suffer. Revenge often involves taking action to bring such suffering about.
In our society, we, in general, look upon the individual taking of revenge as undesirable, for it never ends. Revenge begets revenge. Further, revenge carries us into a murky morality. When does the one who takes revenge, who does something intentionally to make another person suffer as a kind of pay-back, when does that one act with ethical justification and when not? When do we take on the face of our enemy?
This summer Bard mounted a production of the three plays that make up the Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. Briefly, the plays tell a great story of revenge and pose a solution for it. The Bard production literally had blood running down the stage. Very basically, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter to the gods, (slaughtered her), in order to go to war. For this his wife, Clytemnestra, killed him. For that, their son Orestes, killed her. For that, the Furies, avenging spirits, demanded Orestes" death. He appealed to the god Apollo who counseled him to go to Athens where the goddess Athena put him on trial before a jury, who acquited him. Athena then incorporated the Furies into the city of Athens as guardian spirits. The plays, in part, tell a story of the replacement of personal revenge with the rule of law. (They say a lot more than that, but it"s a topic for another day.)
We consider revenge as primal, as something to be controlled by civilization and so we allow the state, rather than the individual, to act as the keeper of revenge. Think of capi tal punishment. A state can put to death, in the name of both revenge and deterrence, a person who killed another person, an act which is not legal for an individual to do, but is legal for the state to do. For the safety of the citizenry.
Revenge is a human instinct; an understandable one at that. Revenge seeks to solve a problem and alleviate a bad situation by attempting to make sure that the harm perpetrated by a person does not happen again. It can be seen as an effort to restore safety. However, on a practical level, revenge does not really work. Revenge breeds revenge and so does not restore safety in the long run. Often it escalates the damage. On an ethical level, one wonders where to find the moral high ground. Who had the greater claim to moral justification: Clytemnestra or Orestes? Both? Neither? Revenge leads us into murky places. Have you ever wanted to take revenge upon someone? Have you ever done it? Did it help?
Forgiveness, or some measure of reconciliation that leads to peace, or acceptance, or letting go, provides an alternative to revenge. Sometimes revenge appears as the stronger action, but forgiveness requires just as much, if not more, strength. Anger usually accompanies revenge, just as it usually appears in the time preceding forgiveness. Both revenge and forgiveness use anger, but in different ways. Revenge takes anger and gives it an outlet for punitive action. Forgiveness takes anger and seeks to understand it as a response to human relations gone awry, even to the extent of gauging anger as an indicator of a moral misstep. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr."s famous line, There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. How we use our anger is often the difference between revenge and forgiveness.
On these High Holy Days, when Jews examine their lives, partially in the light of revenge and forgiveness and anger, a prayer is said, the Avinu Malkeinu. For our meditation today we will listen to that prayer, as sung by Barbra Streisand. A translation of the Hebrew is:
Hear our prayer We have sinned before thee Have compassion upon us and upon our children Help us bring an end to pestilence, war, and famine Cause all hate and oppression to vanish from the earth Inscribe us for blessing in the book of life Let the new year be a good year for us
Meditation
Joys and Sorrows
Offering and Offertory
My Bad, part 2
The times when I have most wanted to take revenge upon another person were those in which the other person did not seem to care, or feel regret, that he/she had done something to hurt me. The times when I have found it easiest to forgive are the times when the one who has hurt me has acknowledged that I felt hurt, cared about my feelings and indicated an intention to be careful in the future. Has that been so for you as well?
I think the reason for this is that when we express our regret, even remorse, at hurting another person, we are taking steps to re-establish the connection that we broke. Forgiveness and revenge have less to do with who is right and who wrong than with the breaking and re-establishment of connection. Some of us, with struggle, arrive at forgiveness, in the sense of peace, acceptance, letting go, when no acknowledgement is forthcoming. Some of us do not. Acknowledgement and expressions of regret can help.
It works similarly in the forgiveness of ourselves. How many grudges against ourselves fill the backpacks we carry around in our hearts? These self-grudges disconnect us from our own beings because they make compassion and understanding difficult to come by. It"s hard to treat ourselves with love when we use our anger to beat ourselves up in a form of self-revenge. Why did I make that choice? How could I have said that and hurt his feelings so? Why am I such a bad friend, partner, parent? What would happen if we apologized to ourselves? Used our anger as information that we crossed the line of our own aspirations of how we want to act? Like this: I know the words I said hurt someone I love. I will apologize to her/him, but first I will acknowledge that I disappointed myself. I regret that I did not behave in a way that showed my better self. I regret that I caused myself embarrassment. I have every intention to speak more mindfully next time. Might we forgive ourselves more readily if we re-established the connections within ourselves?
Often when we speak of forgiveness and revenge, we think in terms of serious grievances, deep suffering. But also, in the course of each week, each day perhaps, we have many opportunities to forgive ourselves and each other for smaller pangs and relatively minor irritations. The waitress at the dine r spills the coffee into the saucer as she pours. Sorry, she says. You place a napkin in the saucer. Your partner asks you to pick up cat food on the way home. You forgot. The cat has nothing to eat and one of you has to go out to the store. Sorry, you say, I"ll go. Your partner keeps dinner warm. Forgiveness requires a tolerance for mistakes. Even mistakes can disrupt the connections between people. Even a mild acknowledgement can help to restore them.
Here is where My bad comes in. Have you heard that phrase? People say it to mean, My mistake, I"m sorry. In a slang sort of way it bears a resemblance to the Latin mea culpa -- my fault. My bad began on urban basketball courts in the 1970"s and referred to acknowledging a bad pass or a bad shot. The first citation in print is C. Wielgus and A. Wolff"s, "Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up Basketball", 1986. . . . "My bad" came into widespread popular use in the mid to late-1990s . . . via the 1995 movie Clueless. This according to Gary Martin,(www.phrases.org.uk) The Urban Dictionary (www.urbandictionary.com) says My bad is Ruder than apologizing, but with the same meaning: a flippant apology. Sometimes My bad seems spoken superficially, and it can be said in a tone of dismissal or flippancy. I have not experienced it as rude though.
Here is how people use it. I was standing in line at Walkill View Farms yesterday and the person behind the counter asked the man next to me, behind me in the line, if she could help him and he proceeded to place his order. I spoke up and said I was next, so she turned to me. My bad, she said. Your son promised to clean his room=2 0by the end of the day. Night comes and the room is still a mess. My bad, he might say. Because it has not yet passed into proper English usage, and some would say My bad is not even correct grammatically, we mainly hear it used as a slang term by young people.
But consider -- My bad, in its way, serves an important purpose. It helps us apologize and acknowledge the consequences of our actions without having to beat ourselves up. While not used for serious offenses, but rather for the more minor ones, the inclusion of the word bad can also imply an understanding that something went awry and suggest an intention to be more mindful. Often as I drive home from services on Sunday afternoons, le Show is on the radio. It"s a kind of romping wrap-up of the weekly news. Anyway, Harry Shearer has a spot containing the apologies of the week, to the tune of I"m so sorry, Uncle Albert by Paul McCartney. Point is, we live with lots of apologies but we do not seem to change our behavior. My bad might help us take responsibility for our actions and learn to do differently.
In doing so, My bad helps to preserve the connections between us. It helps us to tolerate our own mistakes. It could help us to learn from them while avoiding the guilt that can cripple us and the defensiveness that can blind us. My bad provides a light, but meaningful, touch. Forgiveness needs a tolerance for mistakes. It also needs a reasonable assurance that the damage won"t happen again, or at least the person will sincerely try to change. My bad gets at that. Our children, as we also, will benefit from taking responsibility for their actions, and developing and expressing empathy for the feelings of others. My bad is not a bad phrase.
In these new year days of turning inward to reflect and turning outward to connect, may we put down our backpacks of grudges and find ways to express our anger, not in an unending cycle of revenge, but in a better understanding of how we want to live together. May we empower ourselves to acknowledge the effects of our words and deeds, whether intentional or not, and to recognize and bear our mistakes. May we chose to learn how to do differently. May we seek out the peace, reconciliation, acceptance, and letting go of forgiveness. And to whatever extent the slang words My bad help us to do this, may it be so.
Closing Words: Kol Nidre, the prayer that opens the Yom Kippur service, as interpreted by UU minister Mark Belletini
We vowed, not so long ago, to live lives that added, not subtracted. We promised, not so long ago, to live lives that matched our words, Lives not hard and brittle with anger, but soft with letting go. We made an oath, not so long ago, to live lives that reached for the stars, and did not consist of strings of little disappointments, or fragments of the shattered dreams we once used as mirrors to see how good we looked. The days have flown quickly, and they will flow quickly in the year to come. Circumstance, stress, and brokenness come to all -- it is the human condition. And thus I say before the witness of the blue sky bending above, and before the nodding blue chicory flowers of early autumn still growing here below, And before the clear eyes of children not yet born, Children who will inherit the world from us, That all the vows we will make not long from now, All the promises we will make, all the unspoken oaths we will declare, Are hereby cancelled, annulled, voided, and made unbinding. We are free, not to promise to be good, But simply to get on with loving each other.< /span> We are free, not to vow great transformations, But to engage life with tenderness and understanding, and outpourings of kindness. We are free, not to swear oaths of everlasting loyalty and righteousness, But to continue to be generous to each other, to ourselves, and to the common good. At the start of the new year, we begin again in love.