Sitting On The Stoop (Let Go Of The Banana!)
At over six foot and more than two hundred pounds, the Reverend Patrick O'Neill has a commanding presence in the pulpit. His eyes have a piercing quality to them. His deep, booming voice demands attention. He's been a featured preacher at numerous General Assemblies and when he speaks, everyone not only listens, we all suddenly sit up very straight.
But there was a time this giant of a man, this bold and confident Reverend O'Neill, was little Patty O'Neill. Tiny and timid. Skinny as a rail. The one the bullies zeroed in on when they got bored. Little Patrick grew up in a crowded urban neighborhood full of ethnic diversity as well as the tensions that go with it. In second grade, the story of his life played itself out around two principal characters: Mrs. Boutellon, an elderly French immigrant who lived in the apartment above Patrick, and a gang of fourth grade bullies who hung out right below Patrick's apartment just outside the main entrance door at the bottom of the stoop.
Mrs. Boutellon fascinated Patrick. Her thick French accent and stately manner gave her an air of mystery and wisdom. She had this impenetrable calm about her. Patrick and his seven siblings produced a constant stream of chaotic noise drifting upwards into her apartment, but never once did she or her husband knock on the door to complain. And when she came down to give Patrick's sister her weekly piano lesson, Patrick and his brothers regularly interrupted them with their roughhousing, but never once did Mrs. Boutellon get angry or lose her composure. She seemed a woman completely at peace with herself and the world.
But those bullies, well, that was another story. They were the enemies of peace in the world. Usually you could walk right by them. The worst you'd have to endure was a little bit of name-calling. But if you kept your head down and walked fast, you'd soon be beyond their taunting and teasing. However, one winter morning the rules changed. This time it didn't matter that Patrick kept walking. It didn't matter that he kept his head down. You see, buckets of snow had fallen during the night and the gang decided that it would be a shame not to put that brand new snow bank to good use. So in front of all the other kids heading off to school, the bullies swept up behind Patrick, hoisted his skinny little body high into the air and - on the count of one, two, three - tossed him helplessly through the sky into that giant pile of snow. Schoolbooks scattered everywhere. One of his boots was yanked off. Snow was all over his face, up his nose, in his mouth. He was coughing and choking on it, as the audience of children laughed and the bullies took their bows. Completely humiliated, Patrick slowly dragged himself out of the snow bank and made his way to the stoop of the porch, where he sat alone, frustrated, furious and crying.
After a few moments, Mrs. Boutellon appeared, quietly sitting down beside him. She'd seen the entire incident from her kitchen window. Gently, she brushed the snow from Patrick's hair and handed him a giant cup of hot cocoa. Half way through the warm chocolate, Mrs. Boutellon pulled herself a bit closer, leaned in and said with a kind but matter-of-fact voice, "I know what it's like to be angry and hurt, Patrick. And you are right to feel that way. But you must let it go. You must forgive them. Because, love, this day has so many other things to give you, because this beautiful day, dear, has so many other wonderful things to give you."
Many years later, during a routine phone call home, Patrick's mother informed him that Mrs. Boutellon had died. He reacted to the news by telling his mother about that day on the stoop when she rescued him from his anger and humiliation. "That sounds just like her," his mother said. "You know, don't you, that Mrs. Boutellon and her husband were both survivors of the Nazi death camps?" Here's how Rev. O'Neill describes his reaction to learning this:
"I didn't know that. But it gave even more power to the words Mrs. Boutellon had offered me on that cold day when I was still a young boy. 'This day has other things to give you.' Imagine hearing that from a death camp survivor. Besides the hurts and indignities of an unfair universe, this day has other things to give you. Besides the anger that you want to carry in your heart for all the wrongs done to you - this day has other things to give you. If you are ready to let go of your anger, to forgive what has happened in the past, this day has other things to give you. I heard that from someone who knew a thing or two about pain and hurt and injustice and indignities. I heard that from a survivor."
It's both remarkable and troubling, I think, to step back and realize how much of our lives is spent sitting on that stoop. Not a single day goes by without some indignity, injustice or wound entering our lives. Most often they are small and easy to excuse, but still they land us on the stoop, angry, hurt and stuck - just like little Patrick. For instance, it takes us an entire evening to get over the fact our spouse didn't seem the least bit interested as we vented over dinner about our cruddy day at work. An entire morning can be ruined by our kids forgetting to say I love you or not noticing that we got up early to make their favorite breakfast. Birthday parties or Christmas weekends can be completely ruined by one of our loved ones giving us a gift that doesn't reflect our loves or likes. I remember one Christmas an aunt storming out of the room after opening a present from her husband. Her face was beet red as she screamed, "You don't know me at all do you?!"
Co-workers taking their frustrations out on us. Random drivers honking their horns and cursing us out for not noticing right away that the light turned green. Friends forgetting that it's the anniversary of our mother's death. The Sears service representative callously telling us that our new refrigerator breaking down is OUR FAULT because we choose not to pay extra for the extended warranty. (Kaaren and I are still upset at that one and it happened over a year ago!!) All of these, minor injustices. All fairly easy to get over. But all leaving us on the stoop much longer than we'd want.
And often, it's not really the small injustices themselves that get us stuck. It's the way those lesser offenses reopen and resurrect deeper wounds. For instance, it's not really about our kids forgetting to say I love you; it's the way that moment takes us back to our own childhood and a mother whose neediness caused her to seek love more than give it, or a father that pointed out flaws rather than just once tell us, "I'm so proud of you." It's not really the rude driver that flips us off as he drives by. That's not what ruins our day; it's the way that driver seems to symbolize the indifference and cruelty of a universe that took our spouse from us at 45 years of age or brought cancer to our lives even though we run every day and gave up red meat years and years ago. It's like being double teamed or ganged-up on. Rarely does forgiveness involve one wound at a time. Rather, those smaller everyday wounds seem to open the door for a flood of wounds and indignities that still haunt us from our past. Offense after offense winding themselves into each other until we find ourselves with a huge, complicated ball of pain and hurt in our hands. It's no wonder we can so easily end up on the stoop for years on end.
Which, as odd as it sounds, makes me think of monkeys!
Recently I learned that park rangers in Africa have devised an incredibly unique way of catching monkeys. Tagging and administering medicine to monkeys are routine tasks of rangers. In an effort not to harm the monkeys with guns and darts as they capture them, the rangers have come up with something they call "the banana method." Its simplicity is its brilliance. You take a fairly large and heavy Plexiglas box and drill a small hole in the side of it, a hole just big enough for the monkey to squeeze its hand through. Inside the box you place a banana. Inevitably the monkey will see the banana through the Plexiglas and come down from the tree to get it. By straightening out its fingers, the monkey can easily get its hand in and grab hold of the banana, but once the monkey makes a fist with the banana in it, there is no way for it to pull its hand back out. It's stuck, that is as long as it refuses to let go of the banana. And for some reason having to do with complex issues of adaptation and instinct, monkeys - virtually every single one of them - have a terrible time letting go. Freedom is right there for the taking if only they let loose their grip. But, you see, they don't. A part of them holds on for dear life. A part of them remains stuck. And it's important to remember that it's not their whole being stuck in the cage, only their fist, only one small part of them. But that one small part, because it is unable to let go, becomes a great weight to the monkey, holding its entire life hostage.
Now when I recently told one of our staff this story, you know what they said? They smiled, shook their head and said simply, "Dumb monkey! What a bunch of sad and dumb monkeys!"
Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I think that's how we often feel about ourselves. Every single one of us in this room has an intellect we are proud of. For better or worse, we UU's rarely doubt or feel a lack of acumen, as they say. But no matter how intellectually bright we consider ourselves, all of us have moments of wishing we could be more sophisticated emotionally. So often -- more often than we'd like to admit -- we find ourselves sitting back and watching as our basic instincts and emotions guide us more than we guide them. Like that monkey, we sit and stare for hours - even years - at our fist wrapped so tightly around the memory of someone or something that hurt us. We sit there knowing that if we could just open that fist, forgive that offense, let it go, then we'd be free. We marshal all the intellect and will-power we can and yet still we just can't seem to figure out a way to make that piece of us - that hurt and wounded piece of us -- release its grip. "Dumb monkey," we say to ourselves, in one way or another, and we sit there stuck, baffled by our inability to forgive and let go.
But here, you see, is where I think the brilliance of Mrs. Boutellon comes to us as a gift. Here we are, sitting on our stoops, caught up in the complexities and conundrums of how to forgive our enemies, asking ourselves, "Is it ever really possible or right to forgive these bullies of our lives? Especially when they don't deserve forgiveness or even ask for it?" And along comes Mrs. Boutellon, turning everything on its head with her calm, kind voice saying simply:
It doesn't have to be about them!
The decision to forgive doesn't have to depend on the deservingness of others; it's also a matter of our deservingness!
Forgive, she says, because this day has so many other things to give you!
Which of course is a message that goes completely against the grain. We're just so used to framing the question of forgiveness in terms of whether or not our so-called enemies deserve it that it never occurs to us to ask if we -- the wounded -- deserve it. Indeed, you see this focus on the offender in the very holiday that occasioned this sermon. This is the weekend of Yom Kippur, the final and most holy day of the ten-day Jewish New Year's celebration. Known as the Day of Atonement, this sacred day -like virtually all sacred days set aside for forgiveness - is designed to encourage apology. It presents forgiveness as a matter of making amends. It begins with a 25-hour fast intended to weaken the defenses of participants so they are more willing to look at their sins honestly. Participants spend most of the day in the synagogue in prayer and reflection, identifying all the wrongs they have committed against God and others. But here's the wonderful catch: once you've identified your wrongs, you can't just ask God for forgiveness, you first have to go out and make things right with those you've wronged. Only then can you come back and ask God to forgive you. The message of the ritual is clear: forgiveness depends on the deservingness of the offender.
I came upon the same theme this week as I read Archbishop Desmond Tutu's book about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That entire amazing effort was based on the importance and necessity of public apology. For those of you who are unaware of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it was a nationally publicized -- and even televised -- process led by the South African government in which people who had committed atrocities during apartheid asked those they hurt and the nation to forgive them. This effort was born, Tutu explains, from two beliefs: one, that there is nothing healing about punishment without forgiveness; and two, that there is nothing saintly about forgiveness without repentance.
Tutu argues forcefully against the idea -- often advocated by his own Christian tradition - that people should rise above the requirement of apology and instead freely offer forgiveness as an act of love, the idea that one's graciousness will somehow touch and change the offender. Tutu says that while this is a beautiful thought in theory; in practice, forgiveness without repentance only leaves us vulnerable, subtly or not so subtly taking our eye and our culture's eye off all that needs to be done to prevent the offenses from happening again. In other words, Bishop Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, just like Yom Kippur, say forgiveness depends on the deservingness of the offender.
Which, again, is the way we most often think about it too!
What I so appreciate about the perspectives of Yom Kippur and Bishop Tutu is the way they validate our resistance to forgiveness as something more than just a disturbing and primal need for revenge. They make it clear that there are good and healthy reasons to hold on to our anger and hurt. We're not stuck on our stoops, refusing to budge in the name of revenge; no, mostly we withhold and resist because we believe that apology heals. So until the offender is willing to make amends, it just doesn't make sense to let go of our anger for the sake of those who hurt us.
But it may make sense to do it for OUR SAKE. That is the message of Mrs. Boutellon. And that is precisely the message so many of us need to hear more often. When we are stuck in our understandable but single-minded focus on the deservingness of offenders, we need to hear that there is more than just one way to think about forgiveness. We need to know that forgiveness isn't just a gift we give to those who have hurt us, it's also a gift we give to ourselves. We need to remember that it's not simply about giving offenders a get-out-of-jail-free-card, but it's also - and maybe even more importantly -- about our freedom, about freeing our hands and our hearts for, as Mrs. Boutellon put it, "everything else this day has to offer."
Friends, when we find ourselves sitting there like that dumb monkey with our fist tightly clenched, wanting so desperately to let go but not knowing how, what we need most, I think, is for someone like Mrs. Boutellon to come along and say, "Look up and out and around. Stop looking at and thinking about what you have in your fist. Instead, start paying attention to all the things that that intractable grip of yours is preventing you from touching, from holding, from caressing, even from giving! Start thinking about the fact that you have only 10 or 20 or 30 more years of your life left and how not a single one of them is worth wasting on anger, resentment, and old wounds." In other words, what we need is for someone like Mrs. Boutellon to come along and say, "Let go of the banana, you dumb monkeys, so you can free yourself for everything else that this amazing and joy-filled life is waiting to give you!"
Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of the widely loved book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, tells the story of offering pastoral counseling to a single, divorced mother struggling to support her three young children. In the counseling session she became furious with Kushner when he suggested that she needed to forgive her ex-husband even though he had walked out on her and was using unethical court tactics to avoid paying her child support.
"Since my husband walked out on us," she said angrily to Kushner, "every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he is living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?! How can you even dare to suggest it?!"
Kushner's answer was this: "I'm not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn't; it was cruel and selfish. No, I'm asking you to forgive because he doesn't deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I'd like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. ... Look at what you've been doing all these years. You've been standing here in Massachusetts holding a hot coal in your hand, waiting for your ex-husband to walk by so you can throw it at him. Meanwhile he has been living happily in New Jersey. You're not holding him accountable, you're just burning your hand!"
What I love so much about this story is how it helps us see that forgiveness is not just a matter of restoring justice; it is also a process of recovering one's self. We do well, I think, to remember that the word forgive literally means "to give up," not "to make right." Indeed, as the great psychologist Carl Jung said, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having a better past."
Let me say that again, because I think it is so important: "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having a better past."
Now as depressing as that may sound at first blush, it is important to know that Jung wasn't trying to argue against hope with this quote; he was just trying to get us to locate it in the right place. For him, as for Kushner, as well as for Mrs. Boutellon, real hope lies not in trying endlessly to fix the past, but in freeing ourselves from it.
And this brings us full circle, back to the Rev. Patrick O'Neill. Now grown up and with a whole lifetime of experience behind him, he says this: "The greatest tragedy of so many of our lives is that we never give ourselves the gift of forgiveness."
Friends, I don't want that to be the tragedy of my life and neither do I want it to be the tragedy of yours.
So what do you say? Don't you think it's about time? Let's let them go!! Let's release those imprisoning bananas so our hands and hearts are free and ready to receive all the other beautiful things this day has to give us.
May the grace of getting up off the stoop be ours.
Amen.
September 26, 2004