Hands for a Bridge is a program built around a philosophy of connection, reconciliation, and healing. We do it through friendship, dialogue, art. John Harkin, the principal here at Oakgrove, is a beautiful and inspiring partner in this work, because he lives it as an educator and leader, long opening his heart to aspirations of human connection and nonviolence, connecting to artists, speakers, community leaders, and friends exuding wisdom and decency. The speakers he has brought us, and who year after year make themselves available to come, and the experiences he nurtures model over and over deep welcome and willingness to understand across experiences.
At a minute level, he knows the students here, and seeks to get to know visitors as quickly and as richly as possible; and when we’re in the orbit of Oakgrove school, he is constantly pulling people together to learn from each other, to provide the emotional lesson as well as the intellectual, enlarging our humanity in the humanity of others.
Yesterday, two of those speakers were Anne and Kathleen, the former IRA quartermaster and the wife of man turned by the IRA into Northern Ireland’s first human bomb, as I described in a post about Theatre of Witness a couple years ago. Their close friendship and the message they convey is about honesty and conciliation. What can happen, as happened for them, when we share our stories with those of other backgrounds and viewpoints. Once you know someone, Anne said, and once you know the reasons why they do something or how they came to their fears and feelings, the more likely you are to bring your humanity to each other. We are brought up in a world that tells us to be afraid all the time; but we have the power to bring understanding to our own fears and to those of others, bringing everything that has hurt us to bear on a changed future.
Kathleen had a fantasy: If one of those IRA soldiers who kidnapped her husband, tied him to a truck, and exploded it at a military checkpoint, now came to her door seeking forgiveness, she would tell him there was no chance in hell of getting that pardon from her; but, if you’re willing to answer one question for me, you can come in for a cup of coffee: Why did you do it? It’s not forgiveness on offer, but it’s openness to understanding.
I was thinking about forgiveness after Richard Moore’s talk yesterday, the gift you give yourself, he said, and now, here was Kathleen, suggesting that forgiveness wasn’t itself the key to the kind of bridging to which John aspires. I remembered this too from my father’s battle with his publisher, who eventually won, naming his book Forgive Your Parents, Heal Yourself, in spite of what my father said were often unforgivable legacies of sexual abuse and cruelty. He said at the time the goal was never about forgiveness, but about what’s possible for adult children who come to understand their parents’ hurts and wounded brokenness as it filtered down upon them. What’s possible is not necessarily forgiveness, but a recognition of shared frailty, one that slays the personal monster, seeing through the shame and bitterness to something far softer in personal worth, humanity, love.
I treasure what we’ve seen modeled for us, in John and so many others, and what we’ve been able to bring to this school in our curiosity and joy, and what we can carry out of it.
But it is always going to be about making the small choices, as John says, to see signs of hope rather than signs of degradation, and to help, and choose kindness.
Understanding is more important than forgiveness, gathering our signposts of strength and hope to look to when spirits are hurting.
No comments:
Post a Comment