Forget It All

This will not be an easy read for many of you. However, this admission doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue – you whole-heartily should – just beware that the purpose requires a lot from you. I recall a preacher once who told a congregation after a very provocative and stimulating message that there now rested a responsibility upon the hearer of the message to see to it that what had been said was lived out. Failure to do so was not permitted having heard what had been said. Meaning: There are no excuses allowed when you’ve been clearly informed.

There is a darkness which haunts most of us. Philosopher Ken Wilber calls this in several of his writings our shadow life. We all know that our shadow follows us telegraphing our every move; however, our shadow life is like the shadow of Peter Pan, pulling us in directions we do not wish to go at times when we least expect it. Regrettably, many spend more time in their lives trying to get their shadow behind them rather than looking into the light which always corrects the matter.

What is this darkness and its strange gravitational effect on our present lives? I would like to say that it is one thing, but I can’t with all sincerity. It is a conglomeration of many minute events in our lifetime which have imprinted themselves into our very identity. Singularly, they may not appear important to you today, but when they initially transpired, they left an indelible mark on your psyche. It might have been a lack of love, a betrayal, a defaming of significance, or myriad other impositions that made you feel…invalid.

The wound of these primary events keeps being picked at by subsequent incursions into our identity throughout our daily relations over the course of years, even decades, until today, where these wounds look like vitriol festering pools of putrefied puss. We wince when anything gets remotely close to it and lash out to protect ourselves from the great pain we believe we’ll experience if it were to be touched, poked or prodded.

Many of us have turned inward, built up a series of walls, more like a fortress, designed to enshrine the wound from all foreign incursions. Yet, not understanding the dynamic of how a wound operates, our fortress simply acts as a funnel allowing the spiral dynamic of all our wounds to coalesce into a spinning nova of painful recollections unable to scale the fortified walls we have erected.

Scientific studies have been conducted on this matter and found that we don’t even recall the actual trauma anymore but the most recent memory of the traumatic event. Since many of us replay these events in our mind multiple time during a single day, the only thing we are doing is surfing along the crest of the wave of our last memory allowing the swell from a previous recollection to form our present pain-inducing journey. Rarely are we willing to descend down the face of our wave of trauma into the barrel of over-arching memories crashing upon the shoals of adolescent ignorance.

Yes, ignorance. If you don’t know, then, well…you don’t know. How do you cope if you don’t know how, or that you can? Coping is a skill that develops in the doing of life. Trauma, imprintable memory-moments are rife with non-coping issues not for the lack of trying, but because of the sheer lack of a prior reference in the magnitude of the moment. Coping comes after the event, not during. Often the shock of the trauma will stunt the ability to beginning the process of coping, beginning the spiral of self-examination leading to culpability at one end of the spectrum with being immaculate on the other.

Most coping mechanism we employ today will often present us with the opportunity to forgive the transgressor. There is presumption in this motif that it should be conducted on a “forgive and forget” basis. How is that working for you? Not!

If we could forget, we wouldn’t remember it for the next escalation of pain-inducing, scab-picking, festering. Justified in our righteous indignation we hold a ransom over our pain-filled memories. Someone is going to pay for what we’ve had to endure. We don’t know who, but someone…someone…

Forgiving is not about forgetting. Never has been. It’s about giving. It’s about a gift. It is about a great gift given to someone who doesn’t know they deserve it or think that they somehow have earned it. Read that again, slowly. You have to give a gift which isn’t earned and is undeserving. Forgiving is not about you, it’s about the recipient, entirely. Many, if not most of us, find this too daunting a feat to perform. It negates our senses of right or wrong; it flaunts our ability to declare justice served; it besmirches our “us versus them” nobility to the point of utter embarrassment and defamation.

Paul calls us to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Many a preacher has offered this concept to his flock expecting a “forgive and forget” mentality as the means to the end. Reconciliation only happens after the battle has been waged. It never happens prior. The conflict, the struggle, the unrepentant taking without authorization is the premise, the foundational underpinning of being reconciled. Great wars with tragic battles are never forgotten by either party in the quest for reconciliation. Rarely, however, will true reconciliation be made with forgiveness, with a return greater than prior conditions warrant.

A battle-wearied man, bruised, beaten, lacerated and punctured by an enemy’s assaults draws ever closer to the brink of death. Memories, bitter, mind-numbing memories from the battle just enacted flood the senses with each labored breath. The jovial, ruckus pantomime of victory waves brilliantly in afternoon winds of the naked embarrassment to an apparent brutal submission and conquest. Identity usurped, dominion apprehended, purpose aborted. Death, the final rest, the final act of darkness swallowing up light awaits. Yet, “…forgive them, they know not what they do…” reverberates in the all-embracing act of reconciliation. The price is paid, the sacrifice made, justice served, love…

“As he is so are we in this world…” Battered, beaten, bruised, punctured. Never forgotten, always forgiven. We don’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it. We gained more than we thought we lost just so we could be who we always have been. No, we don’t forget it all. We forgive it all to reconcile, to brand as right what He has already declared as being right. The choice has already been made; can a shadow of doubt exist in the light of this truth?