"to forgive..."

"do you want to be free,
do you want to believe,
do you want breathe again,
live again, love again..." 

I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when my eyes caught the title of a post on the Sojourner blogsite, "Are Christians Supposed to Forgive Abusers?"

It made me think of Sara Renner's hauntingly beautiful song, "Forgive".  It is a song that has brought such healing peace to me over the years.

But it also reminded me of an experience I had over 25 years ago.  I was on a panel of speakers addressing the topic of addiction from a spiritual perspective.

We were fielding questions from the audience when a young mother stood up and asked, "What if my husband is abusive while using drugs, do I leave him -- or do I need to stay and pray for him?  I love him but I don't know how to forgive him?"

The auditorium became silent.  For some reason, the rest of the panelists turned to me -- perhaps because I was the oldest on the panel and a woman.  But I felt trapped.  I'd witnessed  so much abuse in my life.  I didn't know what to say.  The atmospheric pressure in that hall felt heavy and demanding.

I stopped breathing and sat in the absolute stillness of my true being -- not a girl who'd been molested, not the young woman who'd been beaten unconscious -- but the daughter of God.  Someone who had never been touched by anger or fear.  One whose right to love had never been violated or stunted by trauma.

But what should I say? What could I say?  The theme of the conference was, "The Love that Heals."  And that was the thought that filled me like a soaring balloon. Whatever I said, it had to be about Love -- at every point.

I heard myself begin slowly, "Sometimes we have to love someone enough to separate ourselves from them when they are behaving -- or making choices -- that we absolutely know they will regret when they awaken from the dream of a false sense of who they are.  We have to love them enough to say "no" in a way that doesn't allow them to act out those hideous lies in our presence.

In that moment, it became as clear as day to me -- Love is always the motive.  Sometimes we have to leave.  Not because we hate or despise the other person, but because we love them too much to let them use us in a way that they will regret. Not because we are afraid, but because we love their true nature.  

We walk away from being a witness to any violation of their deepest humanity.  We remove the opportunity for self-loathing. We let nothing obscure their path to self-forgiveness.

This wasn't just a cool thought.  It was visceral.  I felt the truth of this inspiration course through every vein in my body.

I didn't need to forgive the perpetrators of my abuse, or the abuse of others -- I needed to love them enough to not let my human thinking about them -- and our story -- get in the way of their direct and immediate relationship with God, divine Love.

In her "Daily Prayer," Mary Baker Eddy asks us to give up our right to be the forgiver, the savior, the assessor, the judge and jury:

"Thy kingdom come,
let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love 
be established in me, and rule out of me all sin,
and may Thy Word enrich the affections 
of all mankind and govern them."

As I sat there listening to the other panelists share their thoughts, in response to her question, it all began to make sense to me.  My job wasn't to figure out whether someone deserved my love, my forgiveness, or even my consent to their right to experience God's mercy -- my job was to trust God's direct and unwavering presence in their hearts.  It is God's province -- not mine -- to make someone aware of their mistakes, to correct those lies, to move them beyond behavior that was regrettable.  It is God's love that frees them from the bondage of falsely identifying themselves.

What I could do, was deprive anyone of "me" - as a prop in their dream.  And I could do that out of love, not out of fear or anger.

I could separate them from my hurt feelings -- and thereby separate myself from them as well.  I could forgive - forego - any sense of sin -- a word which shares the same etymological root as the word "sunder, to separate" I could forego the belief that I, or anyone else, could ever be separated from God as Love.

I could set clear boundaries for what was acceptable behavior from a child of God.  I could love enough to not let someone violate those boundaries -- with me.

This was not about letting go, but letting God.  It was about loving more, not less.  It made room for healing and restoration.  It opened the door to redemption and promise.

What it boiled down to -- was Love.  Love, love love love love.

This insight has helped me more times than I can say.

When someone asks, "Do you forgive me?" I am perplexed and stunned by the question. I can't help but remember Jesus' beautiful plea from the cross:

"Father forgive them..." 

He doesn't say: "Father, show me how to forgive them." But Father, forgive them.   The forgiveness is all Thine.  

In referring to this Scripture, Mary Baker Eddy states in her last published work, The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany: 

"In our struggles with sin and sinners, 

the we drop compliance with their desires, 

insist on what we know is right, and act

accordingly, the disguised or the self-satisfied

mind, not ready to be uplifted, rebels, 

misconstrues our best motives, and calls 

them unkind.  But this is the cross.  Take it up,

-- it wants the crown; and in the spirit of our 

great Exemplar pray: 

"Father, forgive them; 
for they know not

what they do." 

In each of these profoundly practical statements of inspiration and guidance, we are looking at the most currently recorded words of two deeply spiritual mentors: Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy - on the subject of forgiveness.  

Forgiveness is "of the Father."  For me, Eddy's "Daily Prayer," and Jesus' example from the cross, are the highest sense of forgiveness known to man.  Forgiveness is not mine to give. It happens in the sacred sanctuary of one's relationship with the Father.  

While it is our privilege to step back -- and let the dear Christ enter in -- to heal.    

offered with Love,

Kate 

"Moving mountains within..."

"Do you want to breathe again,
love again, live again...
forgive..."

I was sitting in the office recently, praying for guidance in my prayers, when I received the following note/comment from a reader, and it was just the reminder I needed. Thank you dear friend.

"This post [from 2007] came to my thought today as I was praying and thinking about something from my past.

I love what you shared at the end of your blog,

"But this time it was as if the next line was illumined by a spotlight: “And when ye stand praying, forgive..”

I realized that for so long I wanted someone to pay for what had happened to me when I was little, I guess I felt like they should suffer. I wanted someone else to feel bad and sorry. I thought this would make me feel better.

I don't feel that way anymore I have realized that the only way to peace and healing is through forgiveness, forgiving myself and others. Learning to forgive is what is moving the mountains in my heart. I am able to see this so clearly now.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful experience in your life. It has helped me and provided me with inspiration. xoxo"

Dear Friend:
Thank you for sharing your experience...here is the original post you referenced:

"Until you moved the one in me..."

“I never thought
that mountains could be moved
That they could be cast into the sea

I never realized your words
Were Oh so true
Until you moved the one in me.”
- Reed Hess

I haven’t heard these lyrics in over twenty years, but I can still remember how I felt that morning, in the early 1980s, when I tiptoed down the stairs of our basement recording studio as singer/songwriter Reed Hess was laying down vocal tracks from behind the glass window where he sat, eyes closed, alone in front of the piano. 

I can remember the scruffy burnt orange and brown sculptured-loop carpeting with raw edges that covered the narrow stairs leading down to the control room.  I can remember exactly how it felt to run my fingertips along the front edge of that scratchy step, halfway down the stairs where I'd been stopped in my tracks by Reed’s rich voice practically praying those words into the microphone, and burning them onto my heart.

To really know that mountains could be moved.  That was what I wanted.  And Reed had found the words to express my deepest hopes. I can still hear the timbre of his voice, singing what I had been praying each day for years...that decades of fear and despair in me could be dissolved. That mountains could be moved.

I believed in God.  I trusted that He loved me and that He had the power to heal sickness, raise the dead, and transform the sinner.  But I didn’t truly really know if He could move the mountains (and there was a range of them) in my heart. 

Yes, I was deeply grateful for every bit of progress in my spiritual excavation work, since returning to the study and practice of Christian Science.  I had absorbed the universal truths it explained, and had discovered how practical its application was in my life.  I had taken an advanced course in how to heal spiritually, and had left a long career in education to devote my life to helping others as a Christian Science practitioner.  I had experienced and witnessed healings of urgent, chronic, heredity-based and acute physical, emotional, financial, and relationship challenges.  I was absolutely confident in God’s supreme power…"as in heaven, so on earth." 

I was an active member of my church and I was dedicated to this Bible-based approach to living.  I shared it with anyone, and everyone, I met.  Yes, I was sure, confident, certain of God’s love for everyone...but me.  I had seen so many lies about man’s perfection dissolve, when placed under the light of God’s love for others…but could not imagine that it would ever really get at the deep dark stuff in my life.  Other people’s problems just weren’t true…that was easy for me to see.  But I was fully aware…up close and personal….of all my misdeeds and I knew that they had actually taken place, and I felt that my memory of them was pretty accurate.  And that accurate recall was hard to swallow.  In almost every instance, it was hard to forgive...and especially hard to forget.   I had made many mistakes and could see how reasonable it was that my mountains of guilt and self-doubt were not only justified….but there to stay.

When I heard Reed’s voice pour out of the speakers in the control room, I wanted to burst right through that door, and ask him what it actually felt like when God moved his mountains.  But I was patient, and sat on the step waiting for him to emerge from that dark cocoon of silence.  And when he did, I was there waiting. I asked him, "What does it feel like?" 

“Oh,” he said with a sigh, "it feels just like it sounds…like a mountain has been lifted from your soul…”

“But what do I have to do?” I pleaded. 

I felt like I was in an old Kung Fu episode where “Grasshopper” returns in hazy memory to a moment with his Master. They are alone in soft light and seen through a filtered lens.  The child version of the David Carradine character waits for the Master to share a profound, life-saving wisdom.

“Well”, Reed replied, with eyes that were kinder than I thought I deserved, “what did Jesus say?” 

“Oh my goodness!” I thought.  “Is this some kind of born-again brush off?  Does this look like a Christian rally with WWJD (what would Jesus do?) buttons and bumper stickers being passed out like Koolaid at Jonestown?  No, this was a deeply wounded person asking for direction, humiliating herself in front of one of her husband’s clients, and a good friend.” 

What did Jesus say?  Please, I was very familiar with Jesus’ statement to his disciples.  I didn’t even have to look it up.

“And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, "Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea," and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass he shall have whatsoever he saith. 

Therefore I say unto you, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

I politely thanked him and filed his response away….far away.  Once again I was sure I  had misread something that had appeared to me to be God’s brilliant light of inspiration. 

I continued for years to pray.  The looming burden of my mountains became less daunting in the context of a growing sense of "rightness" I was beginning to feel about myself, and my place in the world…especially the spiritual community I served.  I gave of myself, and I got approval, admiration and respect.  My giving was genuine, the acceptance was authentic.  This went on for many years as I gave more generously, served more tirelessly and got more…acceptance, respect, approval.  My mountains, however, had not been removed…instead, my view of them had become more distorted while I squinted my eyes in the bright light of admiration. 

But, quite often that verse from Reed’s song would wash over my heart, or wander through my thoughts like a babbling brook discovered as a refreshing surprise on a long hike.  I’d drink from it and then pick up my heavy pack again, and keep going. But I never asked myself why a song that I had only heard briefly was still running through my thoughts with perfect clarity….every word remembered, every note felt, the singer’s voice as fresh and full in recall as it was the first time I heard it.  I didn’t spend much time asking "why" because I was a busy wife, mother, church member, healer, community advocate…so I must be alright….right?

All this came crashing down around me the first time I did something that really stripped me of the approval I'd come to need like a drug. I felt as if, once again, I was that young woman (this time not so young) sitting on those scratchy orange and brown steps burdened by my own sorrows and mistakes…hungry for freedom from depression and self-doubt.  The mountains in me were looming, I felt the weight of their menacing presence.

And, again, Reed’s song came to me:

“I never thought
that mountains could be moved...
that they could be cast into the sea.

I never realized your words
were, Oh, so true
until you moved the one in me.
Until you moved the one in me...”

These words returned over and over until one dark night...when the mountains of regret and sorrow sat so heavily on my heart that I didn’t think I could breathe...I also remembered his answer to my question years earlier, “What do I need to do?" This was a conversation that I'd stored far, far away from immediate thought. But, “What did Jesus say?” was echoing through time and space.  I surrendered to Reed’s response and decided to actually see what, I thought I already knew,  Jesus had said.  I got up from bed and went to the Bible sitting on my desk and opened it to Mark:

“And Jesus, answering, saith unto them, "Have faith in God.

For verily I say unto you: that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 'Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea," and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. 

Therefore I say unto you, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

But this time, it was as if the next line was illumined by a spotlight:

“And when ye stand praying, forgive..”

I think I can now tell you, for myself, what it feels like to have a mountain removed and cast into the sea. 

"I never realized your words
Were Oh so true
Until you moved the one in me…"

Thanks Reed…

Kate

Since I don't have access to an online accessible recording of Reed Hess' "The One in Me," here is a link to Sara Renner's website where, if you scroll down the index of songs on the left margin, you can click on a sample of her song "Forgive." Sara has also given me permission to have "Forgive" as one of the three songs that keynote my website...and I am so deeply grateful. If you go to the music player in the bottom left of the homepage, "Forgive" is the third song (after Michelle Armstrong's "Unfallen" and Mindy Jostyn's "In His Eyes") that will automatically start playing when the home page opens. If you would like to go straight to Sara's song, you can advance the player to the 7:56 minute marker. Otherwise, enjoy the gift of these healing songs from three extraordinary spiritual singer/songwriters.

"This shirt is old and faded..."

"This shirt is old and faded,
all the color's washed away.
I've had it now for more damn years
than I can count anyway.
I wear it beneath my jacket,
With the collar turned up high.
So old I should replace it,
But I'm not about to try."

I love this song.  Mary Chapin Carpenter's "This Shirt" has walked me through some very long nights where I lay curled in a ball cuddling up with my memories...the good ones...as well as the ones I just felt like snuggling with because they gave me a justifiable reason for my tears.

But as Sara Renner asks in "Forgive" from an earlier post:

"Do you wanna be strong?
Get up on your feet and walk?
Do you wanna rise above
the comfort of this curse?"

I've long known that curling up with the artifacts of my sorrow, and stroking them into a gentle purr, is not the way to move forward towards today's promise of happiness and wholeness.  Clutching the tattered relics of a life "once lived" was my way of being comforted by the curse of rich details...a not-forgotten scent, colors that send me reeling down Memory Lane, a song that pulls me deeper and deeper into an emotional death spiral that is void of Life...of active, present tense living...and therefore, is fruitless.  In fact, these adventures into the past, unless they are visited with the intent of an archeological dig for lessons learned about how to live, right now, with more purpose and vision today, are nothing.  Zip, zero, valueless.  And unless they serve as waymarks for a fellow traveler, they are actually of no worth, at all.

And about that shirt, yes, I do have a life-softened blue denim shirt, with silver buttons...one that I really have used as a pillow beneath a pine tree with my faithful staff-horse, Espresso, nibbling on high prairie grass nearby...but it is not blue chambray I need to discard.  What I really need to throw into the pyre of Love's hunger for the expression of Itself, in order for me to live, live, live a life rich with wonder and purpose,  are those thoughts and memories that suggestively beckon me towards sorrow or guilt, through the gate of nostalgia's intoxication.  And believe me, I've stroked my reasons for regret with more tenderness than Espresso's nose. And I knew without question that it had to stop.

I saw a movie this past weekend that I highly recommend for anyone who needs a reminder of how our view of others' delusions can be more illusory than the delusions themselves...and how our view can then deprive us both of life...real, pulsing, joy-filled, crazy, ridiculously wonderful life.  It's a movie that I assumed would be silly and not worth seeing when I saw the trailer a few years ago.  Boy was I wrong!  Thanks Sandy!  It is now one of my top five films ever!  The movie is "Lars and the Real Girl."  That is all I will say about the story.  It is a film so chock full of redemption and forgiveness that I laughed, then I cried, then I laughed through my tears, and now, I haven't stopped thinking about it for three days...at all.

Like Lars, I am so ready to put my "This Shirt" reasons for being sad, tentative, blameworthy, apologetic, angry, self-justified, unworthy, in the fire of God's living breathing purpose-filled promise for my life's "great sanity" of living!  I love the way Mary Baker Eddy puts it:

"A great sanity, a mighty something buried in the depths of the unseen, has wrought a resurrection among you, and has leaped into living love. What is this something, this phoenix fire, this pillar by day, kindling, guiding, and guarding your way? It is unity, the bond of perfectness, the thousandfold expansion that will engirdle the world, - unity, which unfolds the thought most within us into the greater and better, the sum of all reality and good.

This unity is reserved wisdom and strength. It builds upon the rock, against which envy, enmity, or malice beat in vain. Man lives, moves, and has his being in God, Love. Then man must live, he cannot die; and Love must necessarily promote and pervade all his success.  Of two things fate cannot rob us; namely, of choosing the best, and of helping others thus to choose."

I am learning, from the vantage point of my own "remembering," that the loved shirt we cherish--with its silver buttons, and memories of another time, another place, another story, always softly lit through the filtered light of memory--often carries with it the sharp scent of hurt, and the bone-deep chill of heartbreak.

But, real love doesn't need to live in the past.  Real love LIVES...it is alive with loving, not remembering loving.  Real love continues, day by day, to inspire, encourage, invigorate us to live our loving, out loud, each day.  To live in the  now of our loving, and to live it with a ridiculous abandoning of convention, unaware of disapproval, or fear of society's "frown," is to kick the past squarely into the flames of the hell it tries to threaten us with, and let the heat of our deeply moral human affection thoroughly consume the dry husks of regret and "what once was."   And from this self-immolation of our past, leaps a brave innocence that sings, and laughs, and dances with angels.

Elsewhere Mary Baker Eddy promises:

"The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world."

I want to drop "the world" view of what my life's journey must have resulted in...fear, sorrow, bittersweetness, suffering, sadness. It no longer IS. What once was, IS no longer. And I want to be all about what IS. This old "shirt" is faded...it may have once been wonderful, or deeply meaningful, but if it has lost its warmth, its tencile strength, and its capacity to comfort and console...I am ready to let it go.  Like the phoenix, I am eager for new feathers...ones that I can use to soar above the past, and yet see its lessons in a new light, in the context of how what I have experienced will bless today's opportunities for living a more perfectly, outrageously, ridiculously love-filled and purposeful present...moment by extraordinary moment. 

Or as Harry Potter's wise teacher, Dumbledore, states in the second volume Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets following his phoenix, Fawke's immolation, and almost instantaneous resurrection as a sweet new chick:

"Fascinating creatures, phoenixes.
They can carry immensely heavy loads.
Their tears have healing powers."

Ahhh...to have tears that heal....

hugs,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"...forgive..."

"Do you want to breathe again
love again,
live again....
forgive"
- Sara Renner

I agree with my friend Sandy Wilder, CLO (Chief Listening Officer) of Educare Learning Institute...it's all about forgiveness.  When asked why he thinks forgiveness is so critical to personal and interpersonal mastery, peace of mind, and living on purpose, Sandy offered:

"When we dwell in 'forgiveness consciousness' we have given up the need to judge; to be right or wrong, better or worse, or hold an opinion.  Whatever enters our experience is, in a sense, forgiven in advance, because we see it has never left its home in Truth.  We are given the perfect clarity to get ahead of any problem, because it is seen as corrected before it becomes an issue that needs attention.  We are in our 'zone,' listening forward the unfoldment of Love's direction.

This is living with mastery.  This is where we exist on purpose, on our growing tip.  The by-product: natural transformation, healing and changeless peace."

In the space of this hunger for mastery and forgiveness consciousness, Sandy introduced us to Sara Renner's heart-recalibrating song, "Forgive" at the beginning of a recent weekend-long gathering. We were there for deep listening and transformative self-examination under his gentle guidance and facilitation.  When I heard "Forgive," I was stunned by how deeply its lyrics penetrated.  They pierced through to a new place in my heart and began to dissolve a calcified hurt.  A wounding that I didn't even know I was holding on to, until I heard Sara's song. And I was holding on. I was clutching my hurt close to my heart, and holding on for dear life. 

As I later told Sandy, if I could have, I would have pushed a "pause" button and just soaked in that moment for a few days.  And once the weekend was over, I did.

It was arresting, dissolving, and restorative.  I later wrote Sara Renner, and told her how much her song had meant to me.  And what followed, was a sweet interchange of emails  that led to her graciously allowing me to include "Forgive"  as one of the trinity of inspirational songs that serve as the soundtrack to my website, thoughtgentlywhispers.com.   I am so honored.  (Since the above links only offer a sampling of the song, if you would like to listen to the entire song, you can find it there on my website, it is the third song that comes up on the home page....you can fast forward through to the 7:35 minute mark by moving the control bar forward on the player in the bottom left of the screen.  But if you have the time, I hope you will listen to it in the context of Michelle Armstrong's "Unfallen" and Mindy Jostyn's "In His Eyes").

Forgiveness is not one-sided.  Forgiveness is as freeing for the forgiver...as it is for the forgiven.  Each is holding on to something that the false ego will not surrender for fear of having no drama to call its own.   Victim or perpetrator...it doesn't matter to the ego.  It just wants a story to have a leading role in.  It wants a voice and screen time.  It doesn't care about our hearts, our relationships, or our peace...just its own drama. 

How many times have I been like the monkeys I saw trapped on café tables in South Africa, because they wouldn't let go a peanut that had been placed inside of a hollow gourd.  Their little hands would easily fit in the hole drilled on the side of the gourd, but once they'd reached in, their peanut-clutching fist would not fit back through without dropping the peanut first.  Those silly little creatures would rather hold onto that peanut, than be free.

I can't tell you how many peanuts I have had to drop in the last few years...and it seems like I get tricked into reaching for another one every time I turn around.  The only difference between the me that used to hang on for dear life, and the one that now forces herself to let go...finger-by-finger...is that I am more aware of how easily I  can be made to believe I've been wronged, and that I actually have the right to be hurt, feel betrayed, or refuse to let go of an injury to my ego. 

The false ego...yep, that's the demon. And this ego is always looking, wandering the earth, searching for someone, or something outside of itself, to demonize or blame.  And when we believe we have an ego, and that this ego is our identity, we then feel as if we have to defend and protect, it.   We hang on to its rightness, we protect its actions...however mistaken, we justify its drama...at all costs.  The ego wants us to defend it, at the expense of our freedom to love, our right to live generously, compassionately, mercifully.  Sometimes the ego comes in the guise of our role in someone else's life.  Big sister, mom, best friend...then we feel we have to protect and defend the egos of those we love.  And on and on it goes until we forget what it is that we are actually defending. What we are tight, and angry, and hurt about.  We just are. 

So, I am taking back my identity from the grip of the ego.   I am pledging to be instant in identifying the presence of the ego's drama parading around in my relationships, and even quicker in my forgiving...of myself, and others.  I vow to remember that we all do the best we know how at any given moment.  If something regrettable is done...to us, or by us...it is some fear...of being rejected, misunderstood, or separated from good...that has coaxed us into this space.   I once heard Bobby Lewis share a statement he'd heard years earlier, "There are only two things in the world, love, and the cry for love."  I whole-heartedly agree with this profoundly simple truth.

When I have done something I regret, I find that it was either an attempt to love from a mistaken standpoint, or a feeble cry for love.  

When we realize that we all spring from the same spiritual ground,  or, as Mary Baker Eddy avers,

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit,
is All-in-all, and there is no other might, nor Mind."

we can humbly turn to the Source of our individual and collective being for a compassion-based view of our brothers and sisters...and ourselves.  In the space of this grace-filled perspective, and with divine strength, we step gently into the light of our common humanity and accept that what we all have in common:  a desire to love and be loved, to make a difference in the world and have our motives and intentions understood.

This radical love is the portal that leads into a new beginning...in every one of our relationships.  When we tenderly extend the hand of charity, and surrender our hurts, we begin to find, through forgiveness and grace...a deeply settled inner peace.

I witnessed this kind of gentle peace in the heart of a friend recently.  For the first time, I visited her in her home.  I couldn't help but notice a remarkably beautiful item in their family room.  I asked about it and she humbly shared that it was designed by a family member, and had been a signature piece in a line of merchandise that she'd carried in her store some years ago.  I was impressed.  The piece was classic and beautiful...and familiar.  It didn't take me long to recognize the graceful lines as a design that had recently been carried by one of the "big box" retailers as part of their own line.   But I didn't say anything. 

Soon however, I discovered that there were many lovely items in their home, and I learned, one by one, that each piece had originated in the creative vision of the same extremely talented designer.  When I pressed my friend for details about the designer and his work, she, very modestly, shared with me the old catalog from her store.  I was stunned to see so many extraordinarily lovely designs, all by the same artist. It wasn't hard to see that the catalog was from almost two decades earlier.  Long before the current, well-known retailer had begun carrying copycat knockoffs of their pieces. 

I felt the weight of what this must have meant for their family.  I could only imagine that having your one-of-a-kind designs copied by a mass-market franchise would make it difficult to remain in business as a couture design house.  

But there was no anger in my friend's retelling of this story.  She was gracious, appreciative of all that they'd learned during that chapter, and her heart was pure.  Later that day, I asked her about another lovely item I admired in her home, she told me, without rancor or remark, that it was from the same mass retailer. I was stunned. This was the same firm who'd copied their designs, and ultimately made it difficult for them to stay in business, leading to the loss of their investment.  I looked up at her with amazement.  Here she was appreciating the simple beauty of the piece she had purchased from the company that had played a role in the closing of her business.  I could see how truly free she was. I don't think she even saw the connection.  She was soaring so far above, and beyond, the hurt.

In that moment, in the light of her example, I experienced a healing of my own.  A thawing in my heart about something I'd been feeling terribly sad about for quite some time.  I'd felt injured when someone I respected, and cared deeply about, seemed to have appropriated an idea, something I'd worked very hard to develop.  It seemed to cut deeply.  It had made me feel as if it didn't matter...at all...that I'd listened and prayed for fresh inspiration and guidance in its gentle development over the years as the concept had evolved, taken form, and found its voice.  It was as if, by sharing the idea, it was now something that could be pirated,  reproduced, and adopted,  without consideration for the care that I had put into its birthing.  This was a hurt I'd carried so long that my heart ached with the weight of it.

But in the light of my new friend's example, I began to waken to a new way of looking at things.  I realized that I could let it go, and trust that God was always inspiring each of us, as his truly individual ideas, to treat one another's unique expressions of creativity with appreciation and respect.  I began to accept that I really did know my friend.  I knew this person's heart and was certain that they had also been praying. I began to consider that perhaps they, too, may have been divinely led to a design that might have seemed much like mine, but was purely the result of their relationship to God, Soul...the source of all good ideas.   I discovered that by letting go of my feelings of my hurt, my heart...and my hands...would be free to receive more beauty, goodness, and inspiration than I could ever imagine in the myopathy of resentment and sadness.  In the space of letting go, I was now open to new ideas, able to accept fresh ways of looking at things.

And I could also truly forgive...forego, give up...any sense of intended hurt.  Appropriating someone else's ideas could only spring from a fear that we will never hear our own creative angels.  But man isn't fear-driven...he is Love-impelled.  And in kind,  the desire to "own" an idea...as an originator...springs from the belief that we are disparate egos needing to possess something, and then defend our right to be its creator, to have been the exclusive originator of something...anything.  But man, is free-borne...carried on the wings of Soul's ever fresh winds of infinite form, color, harmony, and design.  Fear of being without inspiration, and the desire to own an idea were equally regrettable views of man.  Two sides of the same coin.  And just as easily forgiven.

Not only could I have compassion for anyone in the grip of fear-based thinking, I could have compassion for someone (in this instance, myself) whose ego screamed for recognition.  Silly ego!!  The resentment and hurt that had gripped me so tightly, seemed insignificant,  foreign, and dismissible all of a sudden.

And in that moment, I had a fresh insight on Mary Baker Eddy's statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create."

Why would I ever want to possess something exclusively.  It was absolutely contrary to everything I believed about Love's generous gifts of beauty.

Or as Eddy further promises:

"Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters."

Every good, beautiful, and right idea springs from an infinite well of impartial and universal goodness.  I could no more own an idea. than I could own beauty or intelligence, a math equation or a beautiful word...like "grace" or "hope".

My hostess' example of forgiveness was pure and clear...it washed away all the grime on my own heart and allowed me to see more clearly what I, too, could so easily do... just let go.

Forgiveness comes in many forms....I had to forgive myself for carrying those feelings of exclusivity, possessiveness, hurt and resentment, before I could discover something truly original (originating in God's infinite goodness), fresh, and lovely.  Something just waiting to be seen, articulated, and shared in His way...generously, impartially, and universally. 

Forgiveness is like that.  It is like opening our hand inside of a gourd and letting go of the peanut so that we are free to gather armloads of fresh inspiration, beauty, and joy....to be ready to accept the gift of being forgiven ourselves....

And sometimes, if we only capture the moment of forgiveness in a single frame, opening our hand to let go...looks just like opening our hand to receive...

Thank you Sandy, Sara, Bobby, my Soul-celebrating friend, and my dear long-time friend...I am blessed by your examples...and your grace,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS