CHAPTER 1
More Than I Had Hoped, Less Than I Had Dreamed
He who has faults is forgiven. Tao Te Ching
That which I am, I would not; that which I would, I do not. St. Paul, Romans 7:13.
Forgiving ourselves is the wellspring of all true forgiveness. It is the deep work of the heart that allows us to grow toward the light instead of struggling constantly with the darkness. Yet, it is also one of the most difficult tasks we face, because we very often are unaware of the thorns and brambles that hold our heart captive.
But what does this really mean? Let me tell you a story.
When I was a child, my father served as the director of disaster services for the local chapter of the American Red Cross. His job was to provide food and clothing to those whose lives had been ravaged by fires, tornadoes, floods, and those events insurance companies darkly call "acts of God."
It was a job with no politics and no agenda. The same radio calls that alerted the police and fire departments alerted my father. The same sense of immediacy was at the heart of his mission. He arrived at the scenes of death and destruction almost simultaneously with those whose job it was to quell the flames, stanch the flow of blood, fight back the waters, pick up the pieces.
And from an early time in my life, I went with him. Late at night, from deep in my sleep, I would hear the distant sound of a ringing telephone, and soon I would see the light in the hallway come on. My father would open my door a crack and say, "There's a four alarm on the northside." He never asked me if I wanted to come along, but we both knew what he meant.
Often I was too tired, or simply disinterested. But usually I forced myself to get out of bed and tag along. I wanted him to be proud of me, and I wanted to be with him, though often we would barely speak as we made our way through the empty, late-night city streets. My eyes would be heavy, and I would be tempted to sleep. But the sense of anticipation, the curiosity about what we would confront, kept me awake. Usually, my father would give me small tasks, like writing down the time of the phone call or making sure his clipboard contained the correct forms and disbursing orders. I would struggle with the bumps and bounces of the speeding car as I tried to mimic the almost uncanny neatness of his script. And when we arrived, I would walk around carrying his clipboard or some other bit of equipment, trying to seem important and involved.
Often we would arrive to find a smoldering pile of rubble. The family would already have gone to stay with relatives, and all that was left was the acrid smell of wet ash and smoke, and the weary banter of exhausted firemen as they wound up hoses and departed for the firehouse to grab a few hours sleep before the next alarm.
But other times we would walk into a cataclysm of human suffering. A plane crash where a small body was carried past on a stretcher with one charred and almost unrecognizable foot sticking out from under the sheet; a fire in a tenement where an old woman sat next to me sobbing and begging the beleaguered firemen to go back into the burning building to save her seventeen year-old cat, her only friend and companion in the world — these are the memories that filled my nights.
It is hard to explain the disorientation that took place in my heart as I followed my father's footsteps. I would go to bed in a warm and protected house, then, in the middle of the night, be yanked from my sleep and transported to some scene of unspeakable tragedy, then wake the next morning back in the comfortable bed I had snuggled into the night before.
Was it all a dream? Did it really happen? My mind told me it did — the images of emergency lights and sirens and flames rising a hundred feet into the sky were burned like scars into my memory. But the smell of breakfast cooking downstairs and the bustlings of two little sisters getting ready for school made it all seem distant, inconceivable. It was almost too much for my young spirit to fathom.
Year after year this strange emotional bifurcation was a central part of my life. By day, I was a young boy, worried about my complexion, whether I would make the basketball team, or if some girl liked me. By night I was intimate witness to all manner of human tragedy and suffering.
On first consideration, this breadth of experience would seem to have been beneficial to my development. It increased my sense of compassion and social responsibility, and made me aware of the small and protected world in which most of us live our lives.
But underneath, deep in my spirit, something else was going on. Slowly, inexorably, I was developing a kind of self-loathing that was running to the very core of my being. How could I possibly be concerned with my own happiness when all around me people were dying, losing loved ones, and having their lives shattered by the most horrifying and disastrous events?
How could I possibly think it was important whether my hair looked good when the night before I had seen the bloated body of a boy my age pulled from a lake skewered on the end of a grappling hook?
The legitimacy of my entire notion of self was being called into question. Even the most humble and natural aspirations I had for myself: love, family, any dream of achievement, became to me symptoms of self-absorption and my own spiritual deficiency.
Without knowing it, I became a monk in my heart. I would go out every evening after supper and walk for hours with only my old dog for companionship. Fields, darkened golf courses, marshes, became my monastery. I would wander alone through the night, wrestling with the demons of adolescence and trying to fight off my desperate yearnings for love and comfort.
Gradually, on those evening walks, I evolved an entire philosophy of spiritual asceticism on which to base my life. I came to believe that the only way to truly enter another's feelings was to have no attachments or desires of my own. In that way I could become transparent to the circumstances of others. I could enter their emotional reality without the intrusion of my own desires and good fortune.
It made sense. If I had no emotional home where I could feel warm and protected, I wouldn't be able to retreat there, in my own spirit, when I confronted the sadness and tragedy of another person with no home. If I had no self to protect, I could empathize completely with another's pain and suffering.
I was a shaman of the spirit, emptying myself so that I could take the pain and suffering of another into me, so that they might not be alone in their moment of tragedy.
Unfortunately, unlike the real shaman, I had no way to spit out the poison of that tragedy. It lodged inside of me and filled me with shame for every happiness or desire I experienced.
It wasn't until years later that the simplest realization came to me. I was sitting alone in a cafe watching a couple at another table. They were in the full...
