Statement on "A"

I feel prompted to make a statement. I have acknowledged that "A" Nebraska permanently injured me, and set me in a direction that forever characterized my life. For that, I must admit, I am thankful, because I feel that I have had a good and meaningful, if consistently difficult and painful, life. If anyone has said it, I am not aware of it: good can come from such devastation; yet it is true.

I am often admonished to forgive "A". I point out that I have forgiven them, repeatedly. Still comes the rejoinder to forgive "A", and I repeat that I have. AND I HAVE! Still, my assertion is met with skeptical minds.

How can you forgive them, yet remain hurt and damaged by them?

I believe that even Jesus Himself would not demand that I embrace those who cut off my arms on pain of going to Hell, given that they destroyed the very arms I am called to embrace them with! … or if I – or God – could somehow recreate those arms so I could offer them in embrace, could I force anyone else to accept the embrace.

Forgiveness does not change the effects of the deed that prompted the necessity to forgive. Forgiveness simply creates the potential to be forgiven. I cannot make them be forgivable, they, with God's help, must do that themselves. If they do not want that, then there is little I can do.

Most of the people who wronged me might not even still be alive, for all I know. And yet, the culture that wronged me came from somewhere and was, I know, passed on to others, whom I have never even met.

It therefore occurs to me that it is not just "A" that I need to forgive, but Nebraska as well.

I have tried on numerous occasions to reject and leave Nebraska, but to no avail. I left to live in Colorado in 1972. I left to live in Italy in 1973. I left to live in France then England and Scotland in 1975. I left to live in Portland, Maine in 1979. Each time I was drawn back to Nebraska because, like God,willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of ten righteous people, I knew there was something good here, and I could not destroy that in my heart. I sometimes feel like Diogenes of Sinope. Who would walk around Athens in the daylight, carrying a lit lantern searching for a human being. 

I still feel, on a personal level, I found that in Sarah, my wife, who was born and raised in Nebraska, and who I loved more than any other human being, more than life itself.

Of course, I have forgiven Nebraska, and "A", both of which stubbornly resist being forgivable, and both of which continue to be the home of so much that is good and worthy of continued existence and embrace – even while refusing to be, for the most part, worthy of it.

Our destinies, however, seem to be linked. So here I remain, forgiving, yet myself unforgiven. I do what I can; I can do no more than that. I continue to live here, even though it is far too often like living in Hell. I do see how it is possible to be loved by God, and yet made to live in a human Hell. It is, I feel, the definition of a fallen world. I continue to seek out and embrace the good I find here, mostly in the hearts of artists and poets. I am irreparably damaged buy the rest. I am sorry; I do not see how that can ever change.

Where my love is returned, it permits me to go on living. Where it is denied, it hammers me relentlessly. I can not place Satan in an arm lock, even through forgiveness, and force him to be anything other than Satan. Neither can I force "A"-ns to be anything other than "A"-ans, nor Nebraskans to be anything other than Nebraskans.

I do hope, however, that the seeds I plant, and the love I exhibit might mitigate the horrors I have encountered, and help what grows out of them find the glory that I know to be here, inherently within them … if only they will nourish it and allow it to grow.

If those I forgive refuse to be forgiven … well … that is out of my hands and in the hands of God.

 But I am exceedingly weary of being accused of being "unforgiving".

###