Your success
and happiness lie in you....
Resolve to keep
happy,
and your joy
and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
~ Helen
Keller
It seems as though I have used this quotation
before. Helen Keller's attitude always touches me. A few years ago, the
beautiful daughter of my dear friend, Tanya, played the role in The Miracle
Worker at our local community theater. It is quite significant to realize that
challenges can create character.
 |
Forgiveness can feel a lot like the dawn coming up over the horizon. |
Recently, I have been working as administrative
assistant to Johnny on the Spot Window Cleaning Service. It is amazing to me
the difference in attitudes people have. What makes that difference? Is it
personality or circumstances? I certainly know at times I bring my best to the
table and at other times I fall far short.
And just last night, worn to an emotional breaking point by a very demanding schedule complicated by two days of rain, we were edgy with one another, having gone to bed in stony silence. Fortunately, this morning the sun is out. He came down the hall and said simply but honestly, "I am sorry for being such a crab last night." My response, "It's OK. We have both been under a lot of pressure."
It
was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray
overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out
of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden
chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to
defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
It
was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I
gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a
Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.
‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean,
gone forever. …’
The
solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never
questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in
silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And
that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I
saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap
with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its
harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of
the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s
frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how
thin you were!
[Betsie
and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi
occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration
camp where we were sent.]
Now
he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it
is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’
And
I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather
than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember
one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But
I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was
face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
‘You
mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’ No,
he did not remember me.
‘But
since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has
forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from
your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’
And
I stood there—I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven—and could not
forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow terrible death
simply for the asking?
It
could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it
seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For
I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior
condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive
men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive
your trespasses.’
I
knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the
end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those
who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the
outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those
who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible
as that.
And
still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is
not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will
can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. … 'Help!’ I prayed
silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’
And
so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me.
And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my
shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this
healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
‘I
forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’
For
a long moment we grasped each others hands, the former guard and the former
prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then.
 |
| One of the many crosses I saw in Europe last year. |
I am coming to appreciate how much my physical
well-being is connected to my emotional well-being, and vice versa. When I am
tired or hungry or have not been eating well, I have fewer emotional resources.
Likewise, when I am angry or afraid, annoyed or frustrated, my hormones and my
physiology are adversely affected by those emotions. If Corrie ten Boom could
forgive, perhaps there is that sacred space within each one of us as well.
It reminds me of the reading for today in Mark
Nepo's The Book of Awakening, "Tragedy
stays alive by feeding what's been done to us, while peace comes alive by living
with the result." We truly are human beings having a physical experience,
aren't we....
