Forgiving Our Ancestors Part V: How Poetry Helps

My father did not meet his own father for the first time until he was a toddler.

It was the time of World War II and my grandfather was active in the Army, fighting as a solider in Europe when my father was born.

I’ve always wondered how this early first meeting, or there lack of perhaps, impacted their relationship until the time of my grandfather’s death in his mid-60’s.

(Or maybe it still does now, who knows?)

Because even after they did meet, my grandfather now a war veteran who proceeded to have 5 more children after my father, it seemed, from the outside, that they were never able to find their balance as father-son.

It probably didn’t help that my grandfather was never able to find his footing as a “provider” either, which, as we know,  was the quintessential masculine role for a man in American life in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s- the same time my father was coming of age.

And I don’t know if my grandfather would have been able to full-fill his role as “provider” even if he had not been a war veteran, because he also did not have a male role model for a “provider” in his own family life with my great-grandmother being a working woman herself, and my grandfather and his younger brother (who also never found his way to being a “provider”) having a series of questionable (to say the least) step-fathers in and out of their lives.

With so many nuances, and so many layers, I will never know.

It reminds me that sometimes we cannot face forgiveness head-on. 

Either because a.) with so few answers, it just won’t help , or b.) sometimes it is just to painful to look directly at the sun.

This is where a buffer, or as Rumi says, an “intermediary” may be of help.

Poetry is one such buffer.

I recently came upon a Rumi poem that I had never read before called "Story Water."

For those of you who are not familiar with Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī , he was a 13th century Sufi mystic who was an Islamic scholar, theologian, and poet. He was born in present day Afghanistan, wrote in Persian, and lived for most of his life in what is now present day Turkey.

"Story Water," goes like this:

A story is like water
That you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself,
like a salamander, or Abraham.
We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that’s blazing
inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.

[My underlining.]

Reading this poem (again and again) reminded me how much I need those "mediums" or "intermediaries" to help my human heart and mind to grapple with concepts and processes as complicated and difficult as forgiveness.

So with that, I will leave you with a few poems (and one Rumi poem is also part parable) that can act as a “mediums.”  

These poems have been meaningful for me on these themes of ancestors, grandfathers and fathers, and forgiveness- which carries with it what I think of as an algorithm of forgiveness including:

Suffering + Radical Acknowledgement + Grief + Wisdom + Compassion.

The poetry I've included belongs to: Sherman Alexie, Mary Oliver, Rumi, and Dick Lourie.

Some of their poems are more subtle and others are right between the eyes; take what is most useful to you, and leave the rest.

Some of my favorite poetry lines from each poet respectively include:

1.) Those angels burden and unbalance us. / Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

2.) And so, for a long time, / I did not answer, / but slept fitfully / between his hours of rapping.
3.) Muhammad thanked the eagle, /and said, “What I thought was rudeness / was really love. You took away my grief, / and I was grieved! God has shown me everything, / but at that moment I was preoccupied within myself.”

4.) If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

I’d also love to know what poems (or parables) have been helpful or meaningful for you as you work with your own journey of forgiveness, and look out for Forgiving Our Ancestors Part VI coming soon…

 Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

by Sherman Alexie

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

 

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

 

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

 

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”

 

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,

And then I remember that my father

 

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

 

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee

 

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

 

And I didn’t realize my mistake

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

 

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days

 

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

 

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

 

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

 

A Visitor
by Mary Oliver

My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open

and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.

 

Joy at Sudden Disappointment 

by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

Whatever comes, comes from a need,

a sore distress, a hurting want.

Mary’s pain made the baby Jesus.

Her womb opened its lips

and spoke the Word.

Every part of you has a secret language.

Your hands and your feet say what you’ve done.

And every need brings in what’s needed.

Pain bears its cure like a child.

Having nothing produces provisions.

Ask a difficult question,

and the marvelous answer appears.

Build a ship, and there’ll be water

to float it. The tender-throated

infant cries and milk drips

from the mother’s breast.

Be thirsty for the ultimate water,

and then be ready for what will

come pouring from the spring.

A village woman once was walking by Muhammad.

She thought he was just an ordinary illiterate.

She didn’t believe that he was a prophet.

She was carrying a two-month-old baby.

As she came near Muhammad, the baby turned

and said, “Peace be with you, Messenger of God.”

The mother cried out, surprised and angry,

“What are you saying,

and how can you suddenly talk!”

The child replied, “God taught me first,

and then Gabriel.”

“Who is this Gabriel?

I don’t see anyone.”

“He is above your head,

Mother. Turn around. He has been telling me many things.”

“Do you really see him?”

“Yes.

He is continually delivering me from this degraded state into sublimity.”

Muhammad then asked the child,

“What is your name?”

“Abdul Aziz, the servant of God, but this family

thinks I am concerned with world-energies.

I am as free of that as the truth of your prophecy is.”

 

So the little one spoke, and the mother

took in a fragrance that let her surrender

to that state.

When God gives this knowing,

inanimate stones, plants, animals, everything,

fills with unfolding significance.

The fish and the birds become protectors.

Remember the incident of Muhammad and the eagle.

It happened that as he was listening

to this inspired baby, he heard a voice

calling him to prayer. He asked for water

to perform ablutions. He washed his hands

and feet, and just as he reached for his boot,

 

an eagle snatched it away! The boot turned upside down

as it lifted, and a poisonous snake dropped out.

The eagle circled and brought the boot back,

saying, “My helpless reverence for you

made this necessary. Anyone who acts

this presumptuously for a legalistic reason

should be punished!”

Muhammad thanked the eagle,

and said, “What I thought was rudeness

was really love. You took away my grief,

and I was grieved! God has shown me everything,

but at that moment I was preoccupied within myself.”

The eagle,

“But chosen one, any clarity I have

comes from you!

This spreading radiance

of a True Human Being has great importance.

Look carefully around you and recognize

the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those

who draw you to that.

Learn from this eagle story

that when misfortune comes, you must quickly praise.

Others may be saying, Oh no, but you

will be opening out like a rose losing itself petal by petal.

Someone once asked a great sheikh

what sufism was.

“The feeling of joy when sudden disappointment comes.”

The eagle carries off Muhammad’s boot

and saves him from snakebite.

 

Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come.

Some things that don’t happen

keep disasters from happening.

 

How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?

by Dick Lourie

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?