"All traditions talk about compassion in their own way. This is why Buddha came, why Jesus came, why Moses came, why Black Elk came, why Chief Seattle came. Compassion is a rare commodity and we have sentimentalized it. We've misunderstood it. As Meister Eckhart says, " Compassion means justice." Compassion is about working from our common humanity and making equality happen. Compassion is about being a spiritual warrior. What we have to do as a species, and as individuals today, will require strong hearts. We have turned warriorhood over to the Pentagon and the military and then the rest of us watch television. So, we need to move from "couch-potato-itis" to being prophets. We all need to be part of the energy of the warrior. What the warrior does that the soldier doesn't do is inner work. We need to work on ourselves and not just the enemy outside. That takes us back to the theme of spiritual discipline and meditation. Being a warrior means keeping the heart centered and clear and knowing what the real issues are. It means opening up the doors of creativity so that we can contribute the best of what we have." Matthew Fox, from an interview with Science of Mind magazine, August 2000.
"Compassion means justice," wrote the brilliant Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart. Justice is theory unless expressed through acts of compassion- acts that telegraph our deep caring, protection, and honoring of each other and ourselves.
In the L.A. Times this week, journalists Christopher Guly and Maggie Farley, reported on an historic gesture of justice and compassion by the government of Canada. On June 11, 2008, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to the Native People for a policy of forced assimilation that "was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country." (latimes.com/world)
While there have been gestures of apology by Churches, governments before and offers of financial compensation in the late 1980's and 90's , there has never before been a "formal expression of responsibility and remorse" by the government for this forced assimilation policy. "A group of 11 aboriginal leaders and former residential school students sat before Harper in a circle in the House of Commons, some weeping as the Prime Minister delivered the government's first formal apology to them. In the crowded, expectant chamber, Harper bowed his head as he read a carefully crafted speech, asking for forgiveness for separating (more than 150,000 Native) children from their families and cultures, exposing them to harm and abuse and sowing the seeds for generations of problems." (L.A. Times, The World/June 12,2008)
Prime Minister Harper's act of compassion, justice and reconciliation is an important step in the right direction - awe-inspiring, needed, timely, necessary. There are many other groups I know who deserve the same apology and forgiveness, and the ending of their story has not yet been written. But I feel hopeful that this apology sets the stage for a new culture of consciousness - for a new day when apology and forgiveness will be second nature. It is time. What holds us back as a people, as a world, in our relationships, in our lives, is our inability to apologize and to forgive. We all have something to apologize for and to be forgiven for. None of us are without error.
Some will say that an apology doesn't change the past -- and they are right. It does not change events. Apology changes how it feels to have had those events happen. It brings Light to darkness and sends an unequivocal message: You matter. You mattered then and you matter now. And we are sorry.
Apology and forgiveness frees us. It frees us to let go, to breathe again, to relax, to open our hearts and minds to life again. It frees us to heal our wounded self-esteem, to regard ourselves highly again, to not feel so alone, to move on and create our future, to stop the revolving door of pain that we keep attracting, to no longer carry the cadaver of the past on our backs. It frees us to feel equal, part of a world that embraces us and honors us and recognizes who we are. It frees us to feel human again, to know joy, to recover our sense of possibility. It liberates us into the present moment -- into the here and now - into a field of joy where all beautiful things are created.
There is no statute of limitations on the heart's need or desire to hear 'I am sorry.' In any compassionate, civilized society, apology and forgiveness is fundamental. Twenty years later, fifty years later, one hundred years later, one thousand years later - it matters. It matters how people feel -- it matters that people feel seen, honored, acknowledged for their suffering and it matters that those who allowed policies like these to occur be accountable and be forgiven. It matters. Without apology and forgiveness, there can be no true 'moving on'. People stay stuck where they are wounded -- or their children and their children's children. Apology and forgiveness recognizes that each one of us makes up the whole - and that each one of us is whole and worthy.
Those were different times..is the oft-spoken excuse. It is an 'excuse' that perpetuates past ignorance and unconsciousness. It is like saying, 'We have learned nothing and we don't care that we have learned nothing.' As one of my teachers, Howard Wills, always says, 'when you know better, you do better.' It is up to us, to all of us, to do better and to ask our leaders for better.
Words are powerful. So are thoughts and actions. Nothing is ever forgotten. Everything is energy and everything is remembered. Our bodies, minds, hearts recall it all. You can create a checklist of your own pain and your inherited pain -- the wounds and omissions your parents and their parents experienced and suffered. And how much they wanted someone to say they were sorry -- to care enough to say, I am sorry this happened to you. I am sorry. I am sorry we did this. I am sorry we didn't know how to do better. I am sorry. Please forgive me.
I was raised Catholic and we were taught to forgive but I never understood 'how' to do it. It was just a concept to me. I would forgive - in words - but then keep holding onto the anger or the sorrow and keep creating out of that old anger and sorrow long after the events that caused that anger and sorrow had ended. In my journey to understand forgiveness and to feel the freedom and peace it was said to offer, I was guided to two profound teachers and traditions. One, a Hawaian Kahuna, Ihaleakala Hew Len and his tradition of Ho'Oponopono, and the other, Howard Wills, a teacher and healer from North Carolina whose ancestral prayers of forgiveness and peace-making are profound and liberating. The basic prayer of the Hawaiian tradition of Ho'oponopono is : I am sorry, please forgive me for whatever in me created this situation. It is a prayer of apology, forgiveness and repentance -- recognition for the need for apology (I am sorry), request for forgiveness (please forgive me) and repentance and personal responsibility (for whatever in me created this situation). Howard Wills' ancestral forgiveness and peacemaking prayers are freely distributed from his site (www.howardwills.com) and if read out loud daily will release you of burdens and karma, soften your heart, open your life, heal relationships, and make you receptive to more love,peace, joy, health, abundance. His prayers are considered 'word medicine' and are truly transformational -- I have been the recipient of much healing as a result of doing his work.
In a world reaching ever more toward Oneness -- the practice of apology and forgiveness is essential. What we think, say and do matters. And what was said, thought and done then matters too - even if we can't know exactly what happened or had nothing personally to do with it. We are connected to it all. In any country that stands for peace, forgiveness and apology is required. As Howard Wills teaches, forgiveness is fundamentally about peace-making and freedom--making peace with the past.
Can you imagine a world where governments make apology and forgiveness policy? Where elementary/middle schools and high schools and colleges and universities teach it as part of their curriculum and part of their core values. Where Churches apologize and ask forgiveness for wrongs committed in the past? Where families, friends, colleagues - your family, your friends, your colleagues - my family, my friends, my colleagues - apologize and forgive each other regularly? Can you imagine living in that world? I can. I am going to keep saying these prayers until shifts of great magnitude are felt, until governments all over the planet apologize, until forgiveness and apology is second nature in my life and in the lives of all those I meet. I invite you to do the same.
This is a prayer, a short form of many prayers I have learned from Howard Wills, which I know by heart, and speak in some form daily: "I am sorry. Please forgive me. I forgive you. Let us forgive and release each other and forgive and release ourselves completely and totally back through all time, through all of our lives. Let us love and bless each other and love and bless ourselves. Let us have peace between us and peace within ourselves. Thank you, God. I love you, God. Thank you for loving me." Howard Wills ("The Gift of Life Prayers - www.howardwills.com)
Peace.
Photo: Statue of Archangel Gabriel, Formica, Italy. May, 2002. Photo credit: Ric Rogers
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