Art Of Forgiving Will Allow Us All To See The Light

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, Without light, nothing flowers. - May Sarton

Ten years ago I was on a train traveling through the Corridor from West Germany toward Berlin. This 1985 European trip was my second to that continent, but my first to any German-speaking country. The idea of traveling to Germany had frightened me and yet spiritually beckoned me for years.

I was brought up by Jewish parents who had lost nearly all of their family members to Nazi death camps. I have a few relatives left, people who had come here before the Holocaust. Beyond this handful, our family lines have been wiped out by genocide.

During my childhood, my parents and many of the Jewish people of their generation were blunt about their feeling toward Germans. Germans were Nazis. As my mother once put it, “The sound of German being spoken, the thought of riding in a Mercedes Benz - No. My heart just cries out No.” A Jewish relative said: “There’s a special evil God reserved for the German soul.” It was not uncommon for my relatives to say, “We will never trust a German. Never.”

During my youth, I decided I didn’t want to be anti-German. I took German in college, studied German poets and philosophers. As luck would have it, I became friends with people of German origin. In fact, it was a German family who took me in when I needed mentoring as a young man. By 1985 I thought I had dispelled my parents’ prejudice against Germans.

But on the train, I felt visceral fear. The sound of German being spoken filled my body with a rageful adrenaline. I remember wanting to have a gun and mow down the Germans in my train car. As the train sped through the Corridor, I heard the long-ago sound of cattle trains taking my relatives to camps. In the middle of the night, during the most intense time of fear and rage, I went into the space between cars, hid my face and wept. These intense emotions continued throughout my summer in Germany. When I visited concentration camps, I could hardly breathe.

But something happened to me, something incredible, during this time. It was a form of grace: forgiveness. Since the day I had begun studying German language and culture, I had yearned for forgiveness of those who had nearly destroyed any trace of my lineage and genetic dignity. In Berlin, the years of spiritual work came to fruition.

I let go.

This occurred almost exactly 10 years ago today. I joke with my parents now about their anti-German prejudice. They who had promised never to even transfer planes in a German airport have ended up spending time in Frankfurt and other German cities, and have made some of their own peace with the darkness.

“Forgive, but don’t forget.” These were Charles de Gaulle’s words following his discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust. How can we, as individuals and as ethnic groups, live this in our lives? We don’t need to be in Bosnia, watching the ethnic hatred there, to seek an answer in our own lives. We have enough ethnic, family and self-hatred here.

One of the great challenges of being an African American, Native American or member of any group who feels victimized is to learn to forgive. The passion of social justice becomes reverse prejudice if forgiveness has not first occurred. One of the great challenges of being a child of a chaotic time in history is to forgive the parents who were not able to love us as completely as we needed. The adult child who does not forgive his parents becomes merciless, isolated and, ultimately, just like them.

One of the great challenges of being human is to forgive oneself. One of the great challenges of mature spiritual life is to discover that sometimes morality and psychology diverge. Sometimes we do things - have an affair, hit a child, let a parent die uncared for, commit a crime - which haunts us so utterly that we stop growing. This is a greater mistake than the initial sin. Forgive, but don’t forget. This was the lesson I learned in Germany. Remembering, yet healing - this attitude has made me a more moral, more joyful, and ultimately better human being.

Who needs your forgiveness: A parent?

A child? A friend?

A past oppressor?

Another group?

A leader?

Your God?

Yourself?

The dark corridor waits for all of us. Then at the end of it, the light.

xxxx