Learning to Stand, Daring to Walk
By Bill Musser, Northeast Iowa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
The season arrived with quiet snows, the first of the coming winter, whitening the ground, muting the noises of the day, freshening the air, falling like forgiveness on a world gone awry. I glanced through my window at the flakes as they lightened and finally stopped; I walked out on the blanketed world, and felt strangely at peace because that dreaded moment of change from fall to winter had once again proven to be, instead, a relief, a respite, a joy. I was surprised by the gentleness, and somehow comforted by the change that I saw that day and have seen every year, now, for nearly a half century.
In the whirl of the snow, I was reminded of a scene from August in our backyard: a nine month-old child crawling in the shade of a maple tree, investigating the grass for anything worth tasting. He grasped a fallen leaf in his right hand, found another just within reach of his left hand, and as if to proclaim himself a victor and show his prizes, he rose to his feet with his hands out, exhibiting the green in his grip, unaware that he had never before stood up alone, unsupported by adult hands. Convinced that he was holding onto something stable as he clung to the leaves in his hands, he arose with utter confidence. It was another gentle jolt, the turning of a season for him and for all of us who love him. I knew his future then; I was convinced that he would walk since he had stood.
Our little boy did not know that leaves could not support him; he simply stood. Like him, none of us knows what we might be holding onto; in childlike ways, we sense more than know that it is "good" or "God," and we stand up because of it. Perhaps it really is nothing at all, a great and necessary self-deception; nonetheless, that "nothing" pulls us up. Call it faith, or trust, or simply being fully and un-self-consciously human, we turn the corner, change our season, and in one grace-filled moment we simply do the thing we must do. By faith we stand up. Our lives are changed forever. We cannot go back to crawling.
And then come the first steps, and the falling, and the rising again. We learn to walk despite the pain of falling down. As if we forgive the earth each time for pulling us in its direction and occasionally causing us some pain, learning to walk means letting go of the memory - and the fear -- of falling, and always getting up, always going forward, moving in the direction of the future.
When I think of the degrees to which we humans can go in "falling down" and "rising up," I am drawn to the tragic story of how Charles Robert IV entered the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, shot ten Amish girls in the head, killing five, and then turned the gun on himself. How could we grasp that? And how could we NOT, for "we all fall down" as the children's rhyme goes. We all face the gravity of the grave; we belong to the earth on which we fall, and everything we have or haven't done becomes dust.
But somehow, as we walk through our lives, the unbearable lightness of forgiveness brings us up again, gives us a future we can imagine and embrace. The Amish community of Nickel Mines, those whose daughters had been murdered, publicly forgave Roberts, "opened their hearts" to his family, established a fund for his children, invited his widow to the funeral service for four of the girls. Those who criticized the response of the Amish as "disturbing" signs of "bleak fatalism" laden with "denial" and "passive resignation" did not, I think, fully understand that the Amish folk stood with nothing in their hands but "good", or "God", being human alongside other humans who were hurting. It was not so remarkable, and yet it was quite incredible. With those simple acts of connection and compassion, doors were opened and new relationships became possible. These people knew how to stand up in faith with dignity and grace-and to move on in forgiveness, taking steps forward.
It was yet another gentle jolt, this standing up and moving on. It made me recall the words Jesus of Nazareth spoke long ago at the hands of his torturers: " … forgive them, for they know not what they do." These are not the words of judgment, vindication, or obsession with reward and punishment as they so often became through the centuries that followed. They are words of radical transformation of the world by radical forgiveness, an invitation to dialogue, relationship, reconciliation, and discovery. In this, we rise up with hands outstretched, clinging to that "good" or "God" among and within us, and we walk forward instead of crawling through life in desperate hope of heaven or frenzied fear of hell.
Nothing can change if we, ourselves, cannot. We
must do the simplest and most difficult thing -- hold onto that nothing that
is something, stand up in faith, and walk forward in forgiveness.
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