blogs/brentspodek

A little more than three years ago, I went on a week long silent retreat in Western Massachusetts.

It was late winter, and I spent a lot of time on walking meditations, tracing paths over the snow and through the woods.

My goal was to focus on my footsteps, but my thoughts kept coming back to a conflict that I was stuck in with a particular person. I had arguments with this person in real life, and now, in the sanctuary of the forest, I was having them all over again. My body was in a beautiful, serene place, but my mind kept coming back a place of anger and discord.

It was as if there was a rock of anger within me and it had tremendous gravitational pull. Whenever my consciousness would try and rest on my footsteps or just the majesty of the snow covered forest, I would be pulled back to anger and argument.

Of course, the footsteps, the anger and the self getting angry were all "me."
 
Anger is an amazingly powerful force. It steels resolve, it can animate change and even progress. It also forges bonds between the past and the present.

As Michael Ignatieff has pointed out, bonds forged in opposition to an enemy keep faith between who we were and who we are. To let go of anger is to betray our past and the dire and absolute expression of respect it demands.

A dear friend of mine recently got a letter which threatens to rearrange her life. Her childhood was marked by a brutal family history - screaming fights, slamming doors - bodies and souls scared by the violence. She remembers more than once waking up to find cops in her house, rescuing her mother from a beating. One day she came home from school and her father was gone - never to be heard from again. Her life settled down, and she went off to college to make her own way. Soon after she began her sophomore year of college, her mother died after a long battle with breast cancer.

Now, at 40 years old, with children of her own, she's received a letter from her father, seeking forgiveness, seeking atonement, seeking connection.

Should she respond? Does she dare disgrace the honor of her mother who endured so much to protect her from this man? Does she dare besmirch her own soul, by dragging her hatred behind her for another lifetime?

She doesn't know what, if anything, to do.

The challege of forgiveness is that, without a doubt, some deeds warrant anger, even deep and abiding fury.

At the very beginning of the Book of Genesis Adam and Eve did wrong and got punished. There were severe consequences to their actions, one of which was that they -- and we -- were banished from the Garden of Eden. They weren't simply banished - they were resolutely banished. The Holy One dispatched a menacing angel of destruction, wielding a fiery revolving sword, to stand at the entrance and make sure they didn't come back.

Remember this angel - we're going to come back to him.

The problem with fury, whether it comes from angels or from ourselves, is we get what we focus on. If we focus on fury, we get a life full of fury.

When I was a reporter in North Carolina, there was one guy, Ray, who worked in the ad department and had a very long commute. He lived on the far side of Raleigh, and had to slug it out on I-40 every morning to get to the office. How do I know he had a long commute? Because whenever I'd say "How's it going, Ray?" or "Good morning, Ray" the response was always, "I was in my car for over an hour this morning and am going to be in the damn car for over an hour going home!"
 
Now, if I was a better person, I might have engaged with Ray and turned his fury into kindness. But I'm not - or at least I wasn't then - so I just avoided Ray. I'm not proud of it, but most people in the office avoided Ray. He was very hard to be around. Of course, his anger didn't make his commute shorter; it just caused him pain.
 
The interesting thing is that one year I met Ray's absolutely lovely and charming wife at a Christmas party. I introduced myself and in the course of conversation, I asked what she did. When she said she was a nurse in Wilson, which is about an hour in the opposite direction from Raleigh, I braced myself. "You must have a long commute," I said.

"Yeah, but I love it," she said. "It's my time to relax and listen to some music. Between the kids and the hospital, its the only time when someone isn't asking me for something."

She focused on peace and got peace; he focused on anger and got anger.

We get what we focus on, whether its anger, peace or anything else.

Reb Moshe of Kobrin was part of the Hasidic legacy of Slonim. At his funeral, his student R. Yitzhak was asked to share the essential, quintessential teaching of his master. "Whatever he was thinking of at the moment we were speaking," he said.

We get what we focus on.

Sometimes, the pain of what confronts us is so intense that it is virtually impossible to focus on anything else.

I have a three year old, and when something goes wrong - a balloon pops or his sister takes his blanket or some other calamity - he'll scream with incredible pain and anguish.

In my better moments, I can laugh, because I know this will obviously pass. In the moment, though, all he can see is the pain that comes from the loss of the balloon; he can't see that he won't remember the balloon three minutes later.

Of course, we're the exact same way. The conflicts we endure, the betrayals, the frustrations - they will pass, but we can't see that. In the moment, we experience them, we can only see the pain.
 
Here's the secret of forgiveness. Forgiveness has nothing to do with other people. It has to do with how we address the pain we inevitably encounter as we go through life. Some times that pain comes from other people, sometimes from circumstance, sometimes it is self-inflicted. It doesn't matter.

Many years ago, I was fired from a job and I was completely devastated. I had gotten into a full on power struggle and I had lost. I was furious, absolutely furious at the idiot who did me wrong.

Years later, this idiot heard that my wife was sick, and he sent me a short email of support.

In the flood of emails I got at that time, his stood out because it was so unexpected. After all, except for the moments when I would ruminate on what a jerk he was, I had forgotten all about him.

So I sent him a note thanking him for his encouragement, he responded and that was that. It didn't go any further than that, nor did it need to.

I'm still right about the conflict we had that led to my firing. But because of his maturity and exchange to which it lead, there is a little bit of anger I carried in my heart that I was able to put down.

Is that forgiveness? I don't know. But I do know that in small, but very important ways, I'm a happier person, a lighter person, because of those few short emails.

The Shema calls on us to love the Holy One completely -

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We are to Love the Holy One with all our heart, with all our being, with all our power.

I've never been able to fulfil that command, because sadly, my full heart, my full being, my full power are not available for love. Parts of me are occupied by anger and I am a lesser person for it.

But in that little reconciliation with my former boss, a little bit of my heart was liberated, a little bit more was available for love. What would it take for us to liberate more of our hearts?

Not all liberations are that easy, however. I think of my friend, with the letter from her father. If she replies, will she be dishonoring her mother who suffered abuse at the hands of this man? Will she be dishonoring the child she used to be and the woman she has become?

My friend, like all of us, is defined by the events of her life, and to forgive is to risk betraying the bonds that define her. That is no small betrayal - we are who we are because of everything that has happened to us.

But to forgive is to step out of the narrative which defines us and begin to define our narrative.

Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of England, calls forgiveness "the most compelling testimony to human freedom. It is the action that is not the reaction. It is the refusal to be defined by circumstance." To forgive is to let go of our dreams of a better past and grab, with both hands, the possibility of the future.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was a legendary 20th century rabbi and musician. When the Nazis came to power in his native Austria, he was a child, and he fled to America, where wrote many of the tunes that are used here and in synagogues around the world.

As an adult, he went back to Germany and Austria to play concerts, and he would inevitably be asked how he could play for Germans after what they did. He invariably responded, "I only have one soul. If I had two, I would gladly devote one of them to hating the Germans full-time. But I don't. I only have one soul, and I'm not going to waste it hating."

The essential question of forgiveness is not "is our enemy worthy." It's 'how do we want to shape our own hearts?"

I want to return to the angels who are guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden. You might remember that they were standing there, menacing figures with revolving fiery swords. The word that is used for angels there is kruvim, but this isn't the last we hear of the kruvim.  There are other biblical words for angels, but the next time we hear them referred to as kruvim, it's in the instructions for the building of the tabernacle.

At the very center of the Tabernacle, which the Torah describes in excruciating detail, is a bit of architectural theology. In the center of the Tabernacle is the ark, into which Moses places the stone tablets that he brought down from Sinai. Surrounding the ark are these two kruvim. Where once the kruvim were united in their role as the agents of divine fury who refuse Adam and Eve re-entry to the Garden of Eden, they now define the space of the ark, where the earthly presence of God will reside, by standing with their arms extended, looking each other in the face.

Where once these angels were agents of fire and fury, they now face each other, their swords discarded, their arms up as if in surrender.

Now that they confront each other in open surrender, they create a place where the Holy One can dwell.

They committed no sin when they were agents of fury, but they left no place for the Holy, either.

The angels too, get what they focus on. When they focused on fury, they got fury. When they focused on openness, they got openness, and into that openness, there was space for the Divine.

My friend can choose to respond to her father or not, and either response is completely justified. Ultimately, however, the issue is not about her father - it's about her.

Her father is just a challenge on her path, like a long commute, cancer, a failed job or even Divine fury.

Her question is not whether her father is secretly a good guy; her question is whether responding will ease her path or make it harder?

Questions of forgiveness are paramount on these Days of Awe. We too will get what we focus on. I invite us, as we consider the wrongs we have committed and he wrongs committed against us, to forgive, for nobody's sake but our own.