The Interest Plotted with Forgiveness

The Sun is East to West and the North Star at Night shows you the South from the early morning.

One of the most challenging areas to carry in faith can be the matter of forgiveness. So many these days don’t really have an acquaintance with forgiveness. They meet bearing an axe and silence. They intend to come down on the edge of the force of someone’s will to take, to sabotage or spoil what is not really theirs to begin with. No one can truthfully say, “This thief is my friend.”

No one is born a thief, either. The only thing that makes a thief a thief is conduct.

How I get through most of my days is joy and following where the love is. I believe that God is the creator of all peoples and of their destinies in all of the Earth.

There are wins and there are losses. No one can win all of the time. No one loses all of the time.

It is not wise to lack humility before a defeated party. All respected faith traditions will tell you not to gloat and to respect the hidden powers of your enemies.

There is a losing time. When you win, your opponents may not forgive you. When you lose, the winners may be so bad at victory they do not seek to remediate or heal the land or their enemy with peacemaking. They do not heal themselves from the injury of war. They may build an altar to vengeance and to the past and sacrifice the future upon it.

They may be so arrogant they want to make a loss a permanent trajectory, instead of an incident. That is how wars are perpetuated. Either party, winners or loser can share this foolishness.

For now, I share my understanding with you how a win can feel exactly the same as a loss. Victory stratifies and it alienates old forms of acqaintance. Mixed victories can also reshuffle the deck and refresh relations to admit fresh new competitive offers.

For instance, Martin Scorsese, elder filmmaker in his 90s, stays with us and gives to us great and complicated works of intimate warmaking within families and societies, perilous within and without. All survivable, if you are still sitting here reading this. His film, Killers of the Flower Moon didn’t win any Oscars; while it was nominated in many categories, given actors & actresses for a significant contribution. Native women went from ambushing interlopers brought in from Italian screen mavens to on-screen competitors in major award categories.

In other forays, yesterday was the first time I heard my tribe mentioned over the air in Texas, here in Austin in a public land acknowledgment. I felt reaquainted with the Indigenous hour of programming at KOOP on Tuesdays. Land acknowledgments never bothered me.

It shows me where everyone is at. Who is at peace and who is not. When a simple land acknowledgment among American adults, not to be confused with five-year olds in the grip of socialist agitators, starts to manifest pain - we know pain is present.

Part of my life experience has been a demand that I please forget that I am native and to never remind the company I am in who I am or where I come from because it bothers them.

Why does it bother them? They feel like a captured animal. There is nowhere for them to go but right where they are. That I can understand.

God gave them life. God brought them as babies to this land to be here. No “intervention” is necessary, because they suffer no war or danger from the local Dine’ people.

To live with an ancestral past hitched to crimes against humanity and genocide breaks your mind and your spirit. Caucasian (wrongly) thinks you will be blind to any good they may do in this world. Europeans have no such hang up because they are still busy messing up indigenous Europe. Land & field peoples unite!! So I get a laugh out of that sometimes.

What I cannot understand is the delusion the Americas being hashed considered indigenous territory of White people and Asian people. This new idea of Yellow-washing native peoples is somewhat of an acceptable commission among intergenerational caucasian settlers. Sounds like, “They’re actually just Asians!”

Best guess: those who still can’t reconcile their ancestors role in genocide would feel better if we are all transplants. Then we can sleep better at night, right?

Nope.

Jeremiah 15:10-20

10 Alas, my mother, that you gave me birth, a man with whom the whole land strives and contends! I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me.

11 The LORD said, “Surely I will deliver you for a good purpose; surely I will make your enemies plead with you in times of disaster and times of distress.

12 “Can a man break iron— iron from the north—or bronze?

13 “Your wealth and your treasures I will give as plunder, without charge, because of all your sins throughout your country.

14 I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for my anger will kindle a fire that will burn against you.”

15 LORD, you understand; remember me and care for me. Avenge me on my persecutors. You are long-suffering—do not take me away; think of how I suffer reproach for your sake.

16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, LORD God Almighty.

17 I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation.

18 Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails.

19 Therefore this is what the LORD says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.

20 I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you,” declares the LORD.

You must recognize your wound and call for healing. You don’t deny what happened. You let people be who they are. This is simply a relational band-aid to get through the moment. Let it go through, like a herd moving through the rodeo gate. The dust settles. You get on with your day. We are all still here.

If you really want to deal with what’s underneath this, there is no better medicine than forgiveness. We are all caught in the same trap of warmaking together. America is a peaceful place, not because of reservation systems in remote landborne prisons for native peoples. It is a peaceful place because forgiveness is the path to living without fear among your opponents.

Your opponents don’t have to be your enemies. In one family, you can be side by side without arranging yourselves for more aggression and prepare for a life without extra fear of what may be said or done. Even if you know what’s coming, forgiveness is the practice.

Forgiveness is learned through practice. You can fail, but you are better off working at it than living with a society of broken, half-spirited people.