My Father's Wisdom: on forgiveness in South Carolina

Maybe it is apples to oranges…not drinking poison vs pressured support.

I had a conversation with my dad today, a man phone averse unless a conversation is an actual conversation. He has little tolerance for small talk, even with his long distance family. He’ll ask about my day, give me the basics on his, but unless we are actually talking about something substantive, he hands the phone to my mother and goes back to whatever retirement activity he is engaged with at the time. 

I never take offense. I tease him about it, but I know there is no malice in it. Quite the contrary. If my dad is talking to you on the phone for any extended period of time, it means he wants to. And when he is done wanting to, he says goodbye. 

Given today’s historical significance, hell, this week’s significance, and my dad’s affinity for political conversation, he took the lead on the phone where my mother usually does. 

Today was rife with conversational possibilities. Today was legalized gay marriage (and the apoplectic right wing fits that followed it) and Amazing Grace singing Obama. This week included fair housing and Obamacare surviving the supreme court, this week brought real conversations about bringing the confederate flag off of capital buildings, and this week was the saddest republican presidency launch so far (I'm looking at you Bobby Jindal); and that is saying something with Ben Carson’s gospel tribute and Trump’s escalator ride to bigot town. 

We skipped around on all of these fronts. We hailed the successes of the court and wondered verbally about the fate of other cases…I brought up abortion and we wondered where Kennedy would fall on the issue. 

Of all the things we discussed though, the one that tugged at me, was a residual thought from my recent blog. This connection in my mind that I cannot seem to sever, linking Mo’Ne Davis’ support of a bully and the proffered, and unrequested, forgiveness of the South Carolina murderer. Something about those two things feels so similar…if they are not the same- I argued – they are siblings. Relatives close enough to prove my point.

But my dad wouldn’t budge, holding firm that they are confederate flags and rainbow flags, totally different symbols that stand for unrelated things. 

He has a point.

Forgiveness is centered in my unease with both stories. My father reminded me that forgiveness is as much about the person giving it as it is about the person receiving it. In some ways it has nothing to do with the person receiving it. Not really. My dad talked about hate and resentment and how he heard a pastor liken it to drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die -the pain is solely your own. The only thing you can control is you. And so forgiveness can be an act of kindness to self. A salve on a wound so painful that no one else can soothe it. 

So people offer it up. Forgiveness. Offer it not because any of us deserve it, but because forgiveness is a thing they can do…in the midst of senseless tragedy, the only thing they can do. I’ve done that.

I have been so angry I needed to forgive. So angry on a daily basis, so filled with hate that it was physically exhausting. The object of my hate was never impacted. Never lost sleep. Didn’t change appetite. Didn’t suffer in any way. Didn’t even have to think of me.

I thought of that person almost daily.

Until I didn’t anymore. I forgave. And it slipped away soundlessly.

My dad’s other point was about the macro vs the micro. For the families impacted by the Charleston massacre, forgiveness is actually none of my, or anyone else’s business. Those people were personally attacked and how they choose to live through that is how they choose to live through that. That is the micro. 

For the rest of us…black people…how we experience and engage and endure what happened to the more global “us”, that is the macro. Our collective grief and rage is palpable these days. On social media, in heated conversations. Hushed tones because, really, this level of collective rage has not happened in a while. This rage that has risen incrementally with each passing insult, each passing assault on our father’s and daughters and sons and sisters and friends. In the wake of the recent spate of horrors that have been dispensed upon the collective black psyche many of us are not at forgive.  We are busy grieving. We are busy simmering our tears into rage. We are busy regurgitating the ills we’ve been assaulted with for so many generations that forgiveness is not a word we can comprehend let alone grant...right now.

And that’s ok. 

Right now that is ok. 

I managed to conflate forgiveness with absolution, forgiveness with a request to separate a person’s actions from the consequences of those actions. The South Carolina massacre victims overwhelming generosity did not request absolution for Dylan Roof, if they do seek to absolve him that would be a different conversation and I have a different opinion.

With the courts already inclined to provide absolution in the name of the law, such an act would be reckless from our ranks- already so bruised and bloodied, already so tired. If there is a request for absolution – wholly different from the personal action of forgiveness – than black people should have voice because in the pardoning of this act, so cruelly directed at the black body, all black bodies, sends a message of pardoning of all such actions. 

If there is a request for absolution, my thread linking Mo’ne and the Charleston massacre survivors together would be intact. We will have taught our little (brown) girls and our (strong) black families that there should be no consequences for actions against our lives. I cannot support that. 

But that thread is not intact. There is only forgiveness, a kindness I marvel at because I am not there yet.

Flawed human that I am, I am happy to know that grace exists in this world, happy to know I might be forgiven for my wrongs…but I am mindful too, that forgiveness is a singular thing and justice is another.