By Michelle Brenner
"Holding onto anger,
Resentment and hurt
only gives you tense muscles,
A headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth.
Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life."
John Lennon
Imagine all the people, living life in peace...
The holiest day in the year for Jewish people is Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement, the day of reckoning. This day is experienced in prayer at a synagogue and fasting from sunset to sunset. There are about 13 holy festivals throughout the year in Judaism that include fun, feasting and family rituals but it is this day, Yom Kippur that is known by Jewish people throughout the world as the most observed. Why is that?
Is it because deep in our hearts, we all know that peace is the most important experience to have? Is it because deep in our hearts, we all know, that peace is related to reckoning, and that reckoning takes concentration and knowing the value of what is being reckoned. This Day of Atonement, this day of reckoning focuses not on what we are owed, nor on what we deserve but on what we need to say sorry for. That is the focus of our reckoning. This one day, this allocated day, the holiest day of the year, is put aside every year for saying sorry.
This means that it is understood that we all do things that have wronged another, we have all passed the line of decency in one way or another that has caused harm. It is understood that some of our reckoning may be in our awareness, we may know and remember what we are saying sorry for, but there is also many transgressions, many lines of decency that we have stepped over unwittingly, outside of our awareness. This Day of Atonement is set aside each year to concentrate, to come together as a community as mourners. Mourning for the harm, pain and indignities that we have, in awareness and outside of awareness, with intention and not with intention, caused ourselves and others. The following extract comes from Eliyahu McLean, Interfaith Director of Ruach Shalom, Peacemaker Community, Israel.
“There is an ancient ritual in the Middle East, called sulha. Sulha means forgiveness….
In sulha ritual, the mukhtar, or the mutally respected middle person will invite members of two feuding clans over for a cup of coffee. And, in the Middle East, if you're invited for a cup of coffee, you have to accept it even if it is from your own worst enemy. So, the two sides come together, and the member of the first tribe will offer the guy of the second one a cup of coffee. And the second one will take the first cup of coffee, to show
"I'm willing to show you a measure of dignity and respect. But I have no further obligations. All I have to do is take one cup of coffee and I can take off and leave and I've not humiliated you, because the key aspect is that both sides have to feel a measure of dignity and honor and not feel humiliated."
So if he drinks the first cup of coffee and stays, then a second cup of coffee is offered. And then if the second person drinks the second cup of coffee, he's saying without words,
"Not only did I have one cup of coffee, I had two cups of coffee, and I'm giving you all the honor that I possibly could. I can drink this and I can leave, and I've given you all the possible honor that you could ever ask for."
And then if he stays, then usually a third cup of coffee is offered. So if the third cup of coffee is drunk, then that's an unspoken signal as saying:
"I am ready, in the name of my tribe, to make sulha with you, to make a reconciliation with you."
And the two sides will then engage in a negotiation, where they'll say,
"Okay, your third cousin was killed: I have five camels, is that good compensation, five camels and two donkeys only" "Okay."
And then, each side has experienced a sense of loss, so at the end of day, there was fairness and justice done without the use of courts or the legal system. And at the end of the evening there has to be a handshake, because if I want to make peace with you, but I'm not ready to touch you, have I made peace? No, there has to be a physical embrace, and a handshake. And then after the handshake, the two sides come together for a hafla, a celebration. A huge celebration with food, and dancing- and that's newfound healing.”
In this short story it is clear that in order for there to be forgiveness there has to be a lead up, a set of preconditions that make possible the forgiveness. As in Yom Kippur there are a set of conditions that lead up to the point of reckoning, reckoning that allows the sorry to be meaningful.
The condition of ritual
The condition for forgiveness does not stem directly from feeling guilty or a sense of responsibility. The first condition begins in a place beyond our own thougths of what is or what isn’t, what should have been or what should be. This attitude as the story portrays, begins with a ritual, a connection with a cultural way that links a person beyond their self determined willfullness to link up with another part of what it is to be human, the linkages that relate to belonging, a group identity, to ones ancestors, ones future generations. This part of oneself taps into a broader feeling of what it is to be me or I, to a sense of what it is to be us or we. This is what draws Jewish people, no matter what degree of religious obsevance they have the rest of the year, to attend and participate in the Yom Kippur service.
This is what draws the middle eastern man to sit at a table with an enemy if called to by a mutually respected person. This is what enables the modern society to walk outside of a court after a Judge has made a verdict and accept the decision, no matter where it fits into ones sense of should or shouldn’t. A ritual is done instinctively, without the logic of self choice, a ritual has an authority that lies beyond. Ritual has a power, a power that takes us beyond our selves. The ritual is the first step towards forgiveness. Why, because a ritual takes us passed the here and now to a time before.
The condition of dignity
Another condition that the middle eastern story identifies is the condition of dignity and respect. This condition is the glue that binds society. It goes hand in hand with ritual. It is what connects us to the ritual. The dignity and respect is what we feel when we participate in the ritual and when this includes another person, there is mutual dignity, mutual respect. Dignity is present when people are viewed as worthwhile for no reason beyond being. Dignity is present before there is something to talk about, something to negotiate, something to agree with. Dignity is beyond the something, dignity is the valuing of life that is in ones’ presence and this is often helped along with ritual. Somehow ritual transcends our reasoning and brings us to experience dignity. Our own dignity and the dignity of others. A sense of valuing.
The condition of acceptance
The next condition is that of acceptance. Acceptance is the individual choice and it may come in stages. The condition of acceptance is openness, staying power, receiving from another. This can come in many guises. It may come like in our story, from a cup of coffee, the cup that is chosen not from ritual but from ‘me’. It may come from listening, accepting the words of someone. It may come from appreciating the non perfection of being human, the knowing deep inside that nobody’s perfect, that everyone makes mistakes, that everyone passes the line of decency in the course of every year, some we may know about and others have gone unnoticed, at least by us. This inner acceptance of hurt, pain, the crossing of decency that we all transgrace, brings out a humbleness, an inner knowing that mistakes are part of life. Big ones as well as little ones.
When these conditions are met there is the opportunity for understanding, logical, rational talking and listening, and possibly in the end forgiveness.
Imagine all the world living life in peace,
you may say I’m a dreamer,
but I am not the only one,
I hope someday you will join us,
And the world will live as one……. The Community Project Group of the United Nations Association of Australia – NSW convened a Workshop Day on 5 July 2008 as part of the Equanimity Mate ! Overview Launch to celebrate its ten years plus collaboration with Culture Lab International from February 1997. MICHELLE BRENNER wrote and presented this seminar/ workshop paper as her special contribution to the Workshop Day proceedings.
