Forgiving the Unforgivable

Zestful Blog Post #105

Forgiveness has long been an absorbing interest of mine. I wonder if that’s so for most people who grew up under the Judeo-Christian ideology. My family was as Roman Catholic as my mom could engineer. All of us kids were sent to catechism lessons, the weeknight equivalent of Protestant kids’ Sunday school. As far as I was concerned, the only reason to go to catechism was Sister Jeffrey Ann, whose job was to prepare us public-school seven-year-olds for our First Communion. She was kind and beautiful, standing approximately eight feet tall in her full habit and wimple.

One snowy Michigan night, she deconstructed the Our Father for us. We—all the little Poles, Italians, and Irish in town—lots of Irish, as Mr. and Mrs. Flynn obeyed the proscription against birth control scrupulously—had been reciting the prayer for years, but had we stopped to ponder what it really meant? We hadn't.

Sister Jeffrey Ann went over the prayer line by line, word by word. When she came to “as we forgive those who trespass against us,” it hit me like an ice bucket challenge. According to the sister, holy crap, we, us'ns, who were years from even learning what Kotex were, we, personally, were supposed to forgive.

Up until then, I had the impression that just by saying the prayer you were making a deposit on the good side of your ledger; it had nothing to do with real life. Whenever some other kid did me wrong, all I cared about was revenge.

Sister Jeffrey Ann’s lesson can be ultimately simplified to THIS MEANS YOU. Immediate. Timeless.

Little slights, of course, are easy to forgive. Aren’t they?

What fascinates me are people who forgive the unforgivable.

[It was my honor to meet and hang with Agnes Furey earlier this year. Photo by Unknown Barista.]

In Zestful Blog post #67 (Aug. 21, 2014), I wrote about how to develop one's voice as a writer. I mentioned a book called Wildflowers in the Median: A Restorative Journey into Healing, Justice, and Joy by Agnes Furey and Leonard Scovens. Leonard is a confessed and convicted double murderer, and Agnes is the mother and grandmother of his two victims. The book came about because Agnes decided if she didn't forgive Leonard, her life wouldn't be worth living. She did so, he responded, and they began to build a friendship. The book was a result of that relationship. (And my meeting Agnes was a result of that blog post.)

Separately yet together, Agnes and Leonard are working on an initiative called restorative justice, whereby victims and perpetrators get connected and have a dialogue. If the dialogue goes right, three things happen: the perp acknowledges and takes responsibility for his or her crime; the victim (or survivor) forgives; both find a measure of peace. Agnes is a member of Restorative Justice International, where you can learn more.

This is a huge subject, and I’m thinking I ought to write much more about it, beyond this blog. The times seem to demand it. Although Agnes, who lives in Tallahassee, Florida, is well into what people call ‘the retirement years’, she’s constantly busy. Today she told me she’s on her way to a conference on restorative justice in Louisiana. “Are you going to be a presenter?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to learn.”

Our human world seems full of chaos. One does not have to give in to it.

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Tip for Unleashing Your Voice

Zestful Blog Post #67

For a long time I thought that an original voice is as important to an artist as skill, but now I know it's more important. Tons of painters can render a lifelike head, but there was only one Picasso, who tore heads apart and rebuilt them. Scores of symphonic trumpeters can play the solo at the opening of Mahler's 5^th Symphony perfectly (or damn near), but there's only one Wynton Marsalis, who interprets Tin Pan Alley tunes with the soul of a gentle genie. (Plus he can kick booty as a symphonic soloist too.)

In writing it's the same, only moreso. Any English major can put together a sentence, and some write books that get terrific reviews, but there's only one Virginia Woolf / William Shakespeare / Alice Walker / David Sedaris / Flannery O'Connor / Gabriel Garcia Marquez / Laura Ingalls Wilder / Frank McCourt. And so on.

Recently I opened my Model-T Kindle and read aloud a passage from a book to a group of writers eager to learn the combination to great prose. The passage was a harrowing account by an African-American man, recounting boyhood beatings and other humiliations at the hands of adults who should have loved him. A mini excerpt:

I struggled under you and couldn't breathe. The blood running down the valleys and grooves carved into my skin smelled like one hundred wet pennies.

The students were riveted by the passionately, savagely told story. I asked the students to guess who the author was; some guessed award-winning famous names, but nobody got it right. It was a trick question to make a point. The author, Leonard Scovins, is an uneducated convicted double-murderer who's serving a life term in a Florida penitentiary.

A former drug addict, Leonard found his voice in prison, thanks in part to the mother and grandmother of his victims, a woman named Agnes Furey. After the trial of the man who murdered her daughter and grandson, she decided the only way she could live a worthwhile life would be to forgive Leonard. Meanwhile in prison he got clean from drugs and found Jesus. She reached out to him, and they began to build a friendship. In time they wrote a book together and self-published it. It's called Wildflowers in the Median. Not exactly a grabbing title, but then how would one represent that story in a few words?

Agnes entered the book in a Writer's Digest magazine contest, and it won the 'inspiration' category. She also entered it in the 'life stories' category, which is where I came across it as a first-round judge. In spite of the fact that Agnes's voice is a bit stilted compared with Leonard's, I was tremendously impressed, and chose it as the winner in my flight of books. It didn't win the final round, but that's all right.

Currently I'm reading Keith Richards's autobiography, Life, and enjoying every word. A one-sentence excerpt:

These armies of feral, body-snatching girls began to emerge in big numbers about halfway through our first UK tour, in the fall of 1963.

Hilarious and informative. My point is that you don't need great technique to wow an audience. You need basic technique and an original, unfettered voice.

The problem for many authors is how to find and let out that voice. My best tip for today is to read autobiographies, good ones, the best ones. See how the writers break the rules. See how they express something originally. Absorb their kaleidoscopic language. See how they cut to the chase.

And take that spirit with you when you sit down to write.

Got any autobiographies to recommend? To post, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

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[flowers in the median photo by ES]