Continuation of Last Post: There are days...Part 2
    "What did you decide to do?"
    "I decided to set up a background program in my conscious mind to focus on praying for the social, physical, emotional, sexual and intellectual destruction of this person."
    She turned away from the television and looked at me. "No wonder you've been so focused today! Well, good. I hope it works."
    To appreciate my mother's response, you need to know the recent history behind her ability to say this to me. When I realized, a bit ago, that I was unable to forgive someone and was finally beginning to learn what it was like to really hate someone, I was not so much perplexed as burdened. I wasn't sure how to deal with this internally and decided to seek my mother's wisdom. My assumption was that she probably, at some time, had been betrayed by someone to the point of finding it difficult to forgive them, had probably lived through believing she never would, then had found the grace to forgive, and, at any rate, knowing my mother, probably not continue to hate her transgressor. What I was seeking from her was a description of the road to forgiveness. And, maybe, some anecdotal wisdom on the folly of hatred, blah, blah, blah, that would sound convincing, coming from experience.
    I initiated a conversation between us about this by telling her that I had recently been so deeply hurt by someone that I had come to realize I was unable to forgive them, and, as well, that I hated them. I asked her, without pretext, if this had ever happened to her.
    "Yes." The immediacy of her response surprised me.
    "How long did it take you to forgive them?"
    Without hesitation, my mother responded, "I have never forgiven them. I don't hate them, anymore, that finally faded, but I have never forgiven them."
    I was astounded. "Do you mind me asking when this took place?"
    "When I was a teenager." Her eyes gleamed and her jaw tightened, as if the transgression had occurred yesterday.
    I was blown away. My mother has one of the gentlest, most accepting natures you can imagine. Yet, even she wasn't immune. I had to ask, "Mom, I have begun to pray for this person's downfall. Did you ever pray that your transgressor would be brought to their knees in abject suffering, acknowledge their debt to you and put things right?"
    She continued looking at me as though she was watching the event of transgression against her play across my face. "Yes." Without me asking, she added, after an emphatic pause, "They never have."
    Having been raised in a mild Christian household, although I have never considered myself a Christian, I internalized, through my upbringing, the Christian's fear of feeling hatred, as well as the psychological mythology that surrounds this fear. Thus, I was prompted to ask, "Mom, do you feel that this one almost lifelong inability of yours to forgive has marred your life, somehow made you less of a person than you could have been?"
    Her glance told me that the question surprised her. "No," she said. "Of course not."
    This surprised me. You and I both know this isn't the party line, but, my experience was also causing me to suspect that the inability to forgive and the experience of true hatred were not as simple, nor to be as quickly dismissed or resisted, as I've been taught.
    The next day I was moved to do a bit of informal research at the beauty parlor during my mother's wash and set. The population on that day ranged from 40 through 89, mostly elderly women but a few younger and a few men. I popped the same questions without the personal background and found, to a person, that everyone had one person in their life whose transgression they'd been unable to forgive. The older the person the more likely they were to be completely accepting of this, but, as it turned out, no one felt that their inability had marred their life, tragically or slightly. Even the 89 year old, a woman who considers herself hysterically blessed (and those who know her tend to agree), a woman who still volunteers for her church, had such a transgressor and admitted to her inability to forgive without apology. Interestingly, those us of who were younger were visibly more uncomfortable admitting this, which was noticed and commented on by the 40 year old woman.
    I was relieved to know that my suspicions had been dramatized in my mother's life and the lives of others and were correct. Knowing this allows me a measure of confidence in this exploration of hatred and the inability to forgive I am now conducting in my life.

    If I were not in a position to know my mother and have her know me in such an intimate way I'm not sure that I would ever have allowed myself to explore my inability to forgive and my ability to hate without flinching. Instead, I would have continued to struggle against them, deny them, and would disallow myself the opportunity to understand one of the most troubling experiences of life.
    It is very nice to have evidence, in the form of my mother in my own home, that all of life is meant to be experienced, and that, one way or another, you're going to experience it, whether or not you embrace it.
- posted by gail rae @ 00:26   email...this post