Learning to Forgive

I was laying in bed around four this morning thinking about who knows what or why when I suddenly realize I have been rehearsing arguments against a men's organization I used to belong to. For most of my life I have argued, in my own mind, against this wrong or that injustice or even just to justify some action I took or wanted to take. These arguments were always in my mind and consisted of me making my case, often insisting that someone else correct an injustice to me that had wounded me gravely.

The longest running argument was with my father. It went on for decades, and I don't think he ever knew about any of them. Mostly that was because no man has ever intimidated me quite like he did. I suppose that's generally true of sons whose fathers are less than the cultural ideal of a loving, caring father. The arguments went on for another reason: I knew of no man more unfair and smugly proud of it that my father. He refused to admit a mistake or any kind when I was younger. When I was older, and he was in AA, he began to try making amends for some of his more egregious mistakes. It was hard for me to take him seriously because he never admitted how wrong he was for so long. He was making amends for things he did, not for things he said, not for lying and cheating and browbeating and dominating a boy as young as three (I can't remember farther back than that). And he did it in such as way that I was always afraid of him until I got old enough and big enough that he realized he had to take his act elsewhere. (Or was it that I stopped coming around and he had to find new targets.)

So you can see that I have a lot of work to do around forgiveness, for I have not forgiven the son of a bitch even as I have come to understand more and more what made him the way he was. There's a little boy inside me that I never adequately protected, and that little boy and I still want to kill our father.

I did try to make peace with my father before he died, and I think I did at least reach a truce, but I realize now that I never truly forgave him. And in realizing that, I realize that I have a whole lot of people I need to forgive. I'm not sure I know how.

Oh, I know how to SAY, "I forgive you," but I don't know how to actually forgive someone else. Heck, I don't know how to forgive myself. I seem to recall a story about some young girl who was having visions of the BVM. Somehow she gets into the Presence of the Pope who questions her closely, thinking that this is another love-starved poor girl with a fantastic story that gets her attention. So he asks the girl if she can talk to Jesus right now. The girl says she can. The pope tells her to ask Jesus what sins he confessed at his most recent confession. The girl is silent for a few minutes, eyes closed, hands folded in prayer. They she opens her eyes and says, "Jesus says he can't remember."

The lesson of this story is that once you are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean. Jesus/God does not remember those past sins for which you have asked forgiveness. Great story. Great moral lesson.

Only I don't forget. I may say, "I forgive you," but if I can't forget what you did, have I really forgiven? If I can't forget, I can't trust, because I remember how you abused my trust in the past. I remember how I did forgive, and you abused my trust again and again until I could no longer be in your presence because all you did was pick at the sores you had created.

So this is my journey now. How to I forgive, truly, absolutely, and completely forgive? How does that work? Can a mere mortal do this, or is it a power reserved to the gods? If anyone reading this has any ideas or can point me to any resources I can study, I appreciate your help.