Wow. This continues to be an amazing time, inwardly and outwardly.
Forgiveness...I have used this word relatively few times in this blog, and in my life. Having been brought up in the Christian tradition, where forgiveness plays such a huge role, perhaps this may seem surprising. But here's the thing. When you are brought up by at least one parent who is utterly incapable of asking for forgiveness, you cannot help but question the process. There were five or ten enormous things that a more loving father would have apologized to me for by the end of his life, but it simply was not in his nature. Instead, early on I became the family apologist, apologizing at every turn, for who I was and for just about everything I did. Spending time in England made it worse, because I added their casual "sorries" to every other sentence. In the middle of my life, friends begged me to stop being so apologetic, and slowly but surely I've released the need to ask forgiveness at every turn. Yet when I see or hear of people forgiving other people for the completely unthinkable, I just know I am not there yet. If someone is empathetic enough to come to me and ask forgiveness, I think in most cases I would gladly forgive, but in other situations, I'm still not there yet. I need to marshal my limited energies in other ways.
However, this morning I did something major in my handwritten journal; I suspect this is huge. I didn't forgive a person, I forgave a place: upstate New York/the northeastern U.S. The place of my birth and upbringing, and just about all my family's roots back to the 1600s-1800s. The place I have actually spent the majority of my life. I don't think I was ever completely at home there. Even as a small child, I remember looking out the window of our family station wagon at Schenectady and the surrounding landscape, feeling utterly adrift. By then, England resonated more as "home". I've left, returned, left again, returned, left again. Thinking about that part of the world has only ever depressed me, and left me feeling tortured and defensive. When I have lived there as an adult, it was largely in reference to my family, trying to do things differently than they did. I was in the northeast when my dad died, and I guess it is no surprise that I left almost immediately to come back out here to Minnesota. I didn't think I could bear the constant reminders of him. I didn't want to live in the part of the world I associated with his choices, his blankness.
So why forgiveness, and why this morning? I don't know for sure. But several things hit me. It isn't the fault of the northeastern U.S. that my father was who he was. And it isn't its fault that it isn't England, or that I never found a way to permanently live over there. Perhaps most importantly, in the bigger picture, as an emerging soul in 1955-56, I chose to live in that part of the world, as a part of that specific family with its myriad and paradoxical issues. In its own way, it was -- as places go -- incredibly nurturing. And it is an area whose feminist and spiritual histories are rich -- I may be more part of that stream than I realize.
So, I ask the forgiveness of my hometown and my home region. I truly am sorry that I have so often scrambled to leave you, and felt ashamed of you. You -- especially the landscape underfoot in the Hudson and Mohawk and Champlain valleys -- were not the issue. I just wasn't ready yet to understand that. Please, please forgive me.
I'm not making any assumptions about how this relates to any future plans. But at the right moments and in the right situations, I think "they" are right. Forgiveness is necessary and liberating.
