Stuck on the Stoop: When Painful Memories Just Won't Go Away

Part of a Month-Long Series on
"What Does it Mean to be a Person of Memory?"

At over six foot and more than two hundred pounds, my colleague, 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 national gatherings and when he speaks, everyone not only listens, we all sit up 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.

You see, little Patrick grew up in a crowded urban neighborhood full of ethnic diversity as well as the tensions that go with it. In third 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. To Patrick, they were the enemies of world peace. 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 grabbed 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. School books 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 his 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, this day has so many OTHER 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:

"Well, 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 so many 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, this day has many other things to give you."

O'Neil ends by saying: "I heard that from someone who knew a thing or two about getting over memories of pain, hurt and injustice. I heard that from a survivor."

As we wrestle this month with the place of memories in our lives, I think all of us can relate to Rev. O'Neil's story. All of us have hurtful memories and experiences in our pasts that still haunt us today and regularly plunk us right back on that stoop. As the quote at the top of our order of service says, "The past is never dead; it's not even the past."

And it doesn't take much for those hurtful pasts to re-invade our present moments. An ex-spouse comes to pick up the kids and makes an off-hand remark about, "Hmmm, I guess your mom couldn't find time to brush your hair today." Your elderly mother comes to visit--supposedly to see you accept a professional award--and all she can talk about the entire evening is how yellow just isn't your color. Your father comes to see your new baby and all he can talk about is himself and wanting to watch the ballgame. Your co-worker inadvertently and with no ill-intent says, "Hey didn't you use to be a top manager at Kodak? Why are you settling for this job?"

And right then, boom. Like some perverse time travel machine, there you are right back in the scene of the wounds.

Back to the years of having your spouse masterfully make it seem like it was always your fault and that it was him who was patiently putting up with you.

Back to being that little girl in a yellow dress who's mother's neediness made her more competitive than motherly.

Back to a father who knew the stats of every member of the Yankees, but never really bother to know much about you.

Back to a company for which you sacrificed much but which had no problem abandoning you.

And all of this doesn't even include the more egregious wounds some of us have suffered at the hands of others--and the way they infect and amplify seemingly everyday and supposedly tolerable wrongs. For instance, I have a friend who suffered the inexcusable injury of physical abuse at the hands of her father and now, because of this, is literally debilitated for hours, even days, when a bullying male neighbor or co-worker loses his temper at her.

Simply put, none of this is easy. And all of us have them: wounds from the past that haunt and hook us--and stick us right back there on that stoop of pain and anger and resent, often for years on end.

Which--even though it at first may seem odd or even to be belittle our struggle--makes me think of monkeys.

And stick with me. I know, monkey stories are not the usually fair for spiritual reflection, but every since I heard this story years ago, it's been one of my personal and most valuable spiritual tools.

You see, it seems that park rangers in Africa have devised an incredibly imaginative way of catching monkeys. Tagging and administering medicine to monkeys are routine tasks of rangers. And in an effort not to harm the monkeys with guns and darts as they capture them, rangers there 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 and squeezing its fingers together, 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.

In other words, 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.

When I first shared this story with a staff member at my old church in Syracuse, you know what they said? They smiled, shook their head and said simply, "Dumb monkey! What a bunch of sad and silly monkeys!"

Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way-I really don't, because we are talking about tough stuff today-- 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, 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.

And so 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 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 of how to forgive our offenders, 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; Let go, she implores, 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, as we talked about last month, the great Jewish Tradition of Yom Kippur is a perfect example. It's a ritual that zeroes in on the offender, requiring them to make things right with the offended as a prerequisite for being able to come back to God to have their guilt expunged. The message of the ritual is clear: forgiveness depends on the deservingness of the offender.

Even the Christian tradition with its call for Christians to turn the other cheek and forgive "70 times 7" is built around a focus on the offender. That's the entire reason for such gracious and un-ending forgiveness: it's an act of radical love intended to touch and move the offender so deeply that they will change. And until they do, the work of forgiveness is not over.

Now what I treasure-and think we all treasure--about this largely universal viewpoint is its commitment to restoration of relationship. A connection between two people has been broken; forgiveness is here to mend that. So until the offender is willing to make amends, it just doesn't make sense to let go of our anger and judgment for the sake of those who hurt us.

But it may make sense, as Mrs. Boutellon would say, to do it for our sake.

Yes, the relationship between offended and offender is important, but so is the relationship between the offended and life.

And so when we're stuck in our understandable but single-minded focus on the deservingness of offenders, we've got to remember that there is more than just one way to think about forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't just a gift we're waiting to give to those who have hurt us, it's also a gift we need to give to ourselves, as soon as possible. It doesn't just have to be about granting offenders a get-out-of-jail-free-card; it can also be-and should be-about our freedom.

Friends, when we find ourselves sitting there like that confused monkey with our fist so tightly clenched, wanting so desperately to let go but not knowing how, we've got to remind ourselves to look up and out and around. We've got to tell ourselves to 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 sweet, sweet, silly monkeys, so you can free yourself for everything else that this amazing and joy-filled life is waiting to give you!"

One last story. This one from Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of the widely loved book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He was counseling 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.

"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 so clearly 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, "Sometimes forgiveness is giving up all hope of ever having a better past."

Now as depressing as that first may sound, it's 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 life-time 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? Let's let them go! Let's give up the bananas and get off the stoop!

My fellow sweet, silly monkeys, let's go out and meet everything else the day has waiting for us!

May it be so. Amen.

Scott Tayler, Parish Co-Minister
November 15, 2009