Surviving The Fall, 35

It is about forgiveness. Not forgiveness of the act, of the bad things that were done to you, but of the persons who inflicted the indignity. I am still angry, at the Anglican Church, as I am still angry at upper management where I work, as I am still angry at all the awful things my family did to me, as I am also angry about a tenant on my floor who likes to leave his door open in the dawn hours of the morning while making a racket that spreads throughout the floor and into other units, as I am angry that in response to my polite entreaty that he please close his door that he became threatening and swore at me (I have been in contact with management and I am leaving it in their hands) I have forgiven each one of the persons involved who through their own fault, fear, clumsiness, lack of imagination or sheer vindictiveness have caused me harm. This does nothing to heal the wound nor alleviate the pain. But it does change my focus....The anger is always going to be there, a present reality. If I deny it, then it will go underground and could likely cause me great harm, emotionally and physically. If I give way to it, it would be a destructive force, causing pain to others and greater harm to myself. So, forgiving the perpetrators is step number one, along with forgiving myself for putting myself, or finding myself in a position of such vulnerability. The second step, would be to recognize the outrage, to accept and own my anger and to turn it into a force for good. This would begin with the first mandate of the Hippocratic Oath. To do no harm. Which is to say, I will not react vindictively to those who have harmed me, neither will I do anything to disparage or discredit them. They were for the most part hapless instruments of whatever evil they themselves were vulnerable to. When I was having problems with the Anglican Church, for example, certain individuals overreacted to me and my Christian community while we were attending a couple of parish churches. It was assumed that our disagreement with same sex unions was going to be an active and assertive move against the conversation that was then happening in the nineties to legitimize same-sex blessings. My community, while making our position clear to the churches, also agreed to not do anything to interfere with the process. And I, personally, was also re-exploring the issues, and after a few years of vacillating between left and right, I eventually conceded that there was nothing wrong with same sex blessing, marriage or childrearing. But it was too late. The siege mentality with some of those people in the church was such that they seemed incapable and unwilling to see me in any other light. As my situation became vulnerable and I was poor and homeless I was also seen by those same clergy and lay persons as an easy target. It was decided that I had clinical depression and needed to get on medications, ostensibly in order to shut me up so they would no longer have to listen to me about anything. When my physician and my psychiatrist informed me that I did not have depression and did not need medication, those same people in the church dropped me like the proverbial hot potato. No one would talk to me, especially now that their little plot to silence me had fallen through. No one would afterward talk to me, either to clarify things and offer an apology, or, to persuade me that I was falsely and unjustly accusing them of something they were not guilty of, and I accept that that is also a possibility. There has been no dialogue, though I have repeatedly asked for it, and no reconciliation. Much easier for the Anglican Church to do their grandstanding with reconciling with First Nations people (and that is a good thing), but with a vulnerable individual who didn't fit some of their politically-correct agendas? Not really. I am back in the Anglican Church. My perspective has changed, somewhat. I understand how hapless and delicate those people are who harmed me. This doesn't justify what was done to me, but I can still move on and use this remaining anger, this white-hot wrath as a fuel and as an instrument of transformation, taking care to target only the evil, first in myself, and to honour the human fragility that we all share in common. This anger has actually made me strong and in order to be a positive force in this broken and wounded world, I am going to need all the strength I can get. Wish me luck, Gentle Reader....