I value forgiveness. I need forgiveness. I feel a weight in my chest when I do not forgive. I feel a weight now. I have wrongs to forgive. I know I do.
Recently I started dreaming again after a long time of not. One of the first dreams I had, I think, was ultimately about forgiveness. I’ll skip some details, but essentially I was in a dilapidated old theater. Ceiling tiles were water stained, and it was musty and grimy. But the place was packed. It contained many of the people I’ve ever known. Almost all of my life was represented there. And a guy with a microphone was sort of communicating from the front—he was in charge and had been for a long time.
At some point in the dream I got hold of the microphone and started ripping into some specific people that I felt had done corporate wrong. Big, chunky, life altering wrongs that affected the lives of the people in the room and beyond. I was angry, and it was a righteous anger. It was a justified anger, or so I felt. I named names, I told stories, I brought receipts.
The more I talked the more the chosen few leaders in the room got nervous and fidgety. I pulled no punches. I spared no detail. I was looking for justice and as I looked around the audience and saw faces of people who had been hurt along the way, I was going to get it.
People who weren’t as strong as me, or who weren’t as loud as me or who didn’t know all the stories like I did. People who hadn’t been paying close attention. People who were cut out of community because of other people’s choices. People who’d just drifted off one day. They should all be avenged.
And as I kept talking, I kept attacking, the ceiling tiles began to fall in on me, and the musty curtains started to fall down in great heaps on the floor, I could hear the “whoomp” as they landed, and I could see the musty dust cloud over my people.
And some of the people escaped the building as it collapsed but many people stayed behind and began to choose sides. And I perceived I was on the side of the maligned, the victim, the small, the weaker. But some were on the side of the strong, the powerful, the appointed.
And my rage grew stronger and stronger until the walls themselves were falling in and crashing down on people. And the wind outside blew so that the roof was carried away in great big chunks. I could see the clouds swirling like a hurricane and finally it was so inhospitable that everyone dispersed and fled and found shelter.
And I was carried away to a place of peace, gathered up by some precious friends who live far away, out of the bedlam and the fracas of my past, but who know me deeply and love me unendingly in spite of that fracas.
And I looked around and that man with the microphone was there with me. But I was unmoved by him, and I was focused on my friends who brought me lovingly out of my rage and into a place of kindness. And together we built a new, good thing that built up and sustained the people around us instead of extracting and taking. And the man with the microphone went his own way. And I wasn’t angry anymore.
What do you make of that dream? I have been thinking about it for a few days now. And I think it might be about forgiveness.
The truth is, I think I know who the man with the microphone is, and I can imagine I know who the people in the audience are, and I believe I know what the dilapidated theater represents. They’re all aspects of my past that I have strong feelings about and I’ve been wrestling and working hard on these feelings for years now.
If you are strong, I will hold you to a high standard and I’m not sure if that’s fair or not. If you attack the weak or even if you simply do not extend yourself out to protect them, my anger will rise within me and I’ll become an adversary to you. I’m not sure if that’s an altogether positive personality trait—was I created to be the arbiter? Am I the judge?
This sounds good, perhaps, to some on the first pass. But it all hinges and relies on my own personal judgment, and I can be judgmental. If I’m not careful in my judgment I get wise in my own eyes, as I’ve previously condemned in others.
In my last essay I was in need of a pardon. I stole money. I told lies. And in my dream I’m the pardoner. The bringer of a great reckoning for the weak and the defender of the mistreated.
That’s the tension maybe; I can’t be both in the same moment. I have to choose, and it has to be intentional. Because I may default to one if I don’t systematically encourage the other in my life.
The card says willing to pardon others. That word, pardon. It’s kind of loaded. What’s it mean to pardon someone else? I suppose, in order for there to be a pardoning, there must have been a wounding or a wrong-done in the first place. In my dream, there was a sort of a pardon for the man with the microphone at the end of the dream. I would like to be a person who is able to pardon others. I would like to think that I may be pardoned.
But justice! The righting of wrongs! It’s all so important! The world is filled with genuine wrongs, how can we not be a part of righting them? It’s easy to live in a retributive posture, ready to butter the wrongdoers’ scalps and swallow them whole. Somehow we must do both. It’s one thing to forgive the accident prone, the nonsensical. It’s another to forgive the wrong-doer. But if we cannot, I think we will be eaten alive from the inside out. Unforgiveness, even of the unforgivable, will rot in our bones.
Perhaps forgiveness is about a different posture; one that says “It’s not okay, but you can be pardoned”. One that says “you have no power over me, go in peace”.
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