“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Mark Twain
WINTER OF 2000
Grimy froth quivers like frightened soapsuds and grips the beach while joyous winds, exuberant over the coming of spring, tear off chunks and hurl them across the rain-packed sand. End over end they tumble, like tiny tumbleweeds, then poof! they are gone as if they never existed and no one cares.
My own stillness calls to me and I answer, ``Yes, I hear you, the only calm on the beach.''
The winds, wildly unrelenting in their proclamation, ``The spring is coming! gladden my heart. It has been a lousy winter.
I realize the winds are singing. ``The spring. The spring.'' Not just ``spring.'' It is as though this spring coming is a specific spring, special over all others gone before and yet to come. Could this be the one? To do what?
The quiet place within me is no longer quiet.
Waves crash and break then glide up the sand, washing my toes in warm water filled with invisible life. I feel filled with invisible life. It does not surge and churn with the wind for all the world to see. It does not well up and burst forth frothing like surf whipped into frenzied turmoil, flinging soapy tumbleweeds while underneath life goes on. But it is life nonetheless. The voice from the quiet place says to feel the difference between the turmoil in the sea and the turmoil in me.
The sea's agitation results from exterior forces raging. Mine is interior Last night's dream has made me see.
There has been an enemy chained in a dark place in my soul. It matters not who, nor why. Suffice it to say, one spring 11 years ago, during a drastically dangerous situation involving a child, I could not comprehend a person's inaction. I've had good reason for my animosity. If you knew the whole story, you'd probably agree.
Many times I've considered turning this resentment over to God, but I've never become willing to let God fix it. There was something about this situation, this particular grudge, that made me want to hang on to it, to nurse it, to keep it alive. This grudge was so delicious that through the years it took on a savory quality. At times, I could almost taste it. Never before had I had such a justifiable grudge. I was positively, undeniably right. A jury would have said so. No question about it. That was that.
Still, ``This, too, shall pass'' being a universal law, the day had to come when I would be willing to let it go, this rancor serving such an ignoble purpose in my life. But one day I said, ``All right, Lord, I'm bored with it. I've beaten it to death and sucked it dry. You may take it away now, if you please. I will try to at least be willing to give it up.''
A short time later, I had a dream. The object of my animosity was not in the dream but the principle behind it was. In the dream, a snake was rising up out of a hole in the ground, like a flower blooming. Only the snake wrapped itself around my child and was killing him. I started jumping up and down, screaming for somebody to do something. The only other person in the dream besides my child and me was a man. Because he did not do anything, my mind translated his inaction into he could grab that snake and save my child but he won't. I couldn't grab the snake and that was all right, but he wouldn't and that wasn't all right.
After I woke up the question occurred: Why didn't you save him yourself?
Because I did not think of it until I woke up.
It did not strike me while I was asleep that there was something I could do. I had to be awake to see my options. While asleep, I did not expect myself to possess the courage it would have taken to grab that snake and pull it off my child. I could no more have grabbed that snake than I could stop this wind from tossing these soapy tumbleweeds.
The dream revealed that back there 11 years ago it never occurred to this woman that there was something she could have done to save that other child. She was asleep and could not see her options. Asleep, she did not expect of herself the courage that would have been necessary. Asleep, I expected the man to do something that had not even occurred to me yet, just as I had expected this woman to do something that had not occurred to her yet.
A closer look at why it has taken so long to wake up to the fact that this woman was not weak or evil but simply asleep shows that as long as I could ascribe malevolent motives to her inaction, I didn't have to examine my own inactions. . . plural, as in many. I think I shall resign as her judge.
As usual, in its own inimitable fashion, nature cooperates, mirroring the dream's seasonal awakening. The dream exposed how I had been deluding myself about a couple of things. Actually, it felt more like a good swift kick in the pants.
For one thing, I have always believed I expect more from myself than I expect from others. That turned out not to be true, for clearly I have expected things out of other people that have not even occurred to me yet. For another, once you get a good enmity going for someone, it is really difficult to let it go because you know deep down inside that someday you will have to admit you've been wrong. It becomes easier to perpetuate the illusion of the other person as the problem and not you. Doing nothing just feels safer. I cut her chains and freed myself.
Tonight for the first time in 11 years, I shall sleep feeling no malice toward a single soul anywhere.
Blow on, sweet winds of change.
