There are no virgins in this valley. Everyone has a story, but somehow innocence is lost one way or another. I speak less about sexuality than the attitudes we let creep into our interiors. When you are the victim of rape, abuse, or infidelity forgiveness is harder than ice. No one in the world has the right to tell you what you ought to do. “No one in the world can comprehend my pain,” we tell ourselves. We say it because it is true. Themes of woundedness overlap from life to life, but the quality is endlessly diverse. Conveniently, there is a Godhead to defer to who once said we must forgive “not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” I don’t have the right to instruct others to forgive, but Christ spoke with authority. Why do I mention this and what does it have to do with writing?
Writing and living cannot be understood apart from one another. Your soul spills onto the pages whether you want it to or not. Unforgiveness is the blinding enemy of creativity. It hinders the soul, perhaps, more than the initial trauma itself. Until forgiveness of self or others is sincerely achieved, people find themselves in painful holding patterns mightier than gravity.
The contemporary Irish mystic, Greg Dunne, reports a powerful testament to this. Abused and unloved by his mad Irish father, he eloped from life altogether. By his thirties, Greg was an anorexic drinker who had gnawed his fingers to the bone. This blood-vomiting, nervous bag of bones was bitter, antisocial, and desirous of death. His self-description reminds me of Tolkien's Gollum. One evening in a pub, to his great irritation some nice woman named Rebecca warmed up to him and invited him to meet for tea.
A painful past etched into his face and mannerisms; she didn’t need to hear his story. She jumped immediately to, “You need to forgive your father, Greg.” He tells a hell of a story about standing over his father's gravestone under a grey sky, livid and beside himself. “I don’t agree with what you’ve done. I don’t know why you did it. I forgive you. And I don’t condone it.” Greg felt nothing at first, but that evening he went home to have a powerful personal encounter with God which changed his life forever. Forgiveness unlocked the floodgates of grace.
I am friends with a man who was sexually abused from seven to sixteen years old by his mom's boyfriend, an ex-seminarian. Having been groomed, the relations became consensual. He downed his pain with booze during college and became a professional soldier in the army. By forty, Quinn had been in and out of the offices of endless therapists and had a couple of suicide attempts under his belt. Every illegal substance known to man had passed through this man’s bloodstream. Today he saunters the streets of my neighborhood as a playful, proud father completely unburdened from a lifetime of trauma. Professional help played its part, but what is the miracle he elevates for all to see? “I have forgiven the man completely,” Quinn says in astonishment. His published memoir may not be a best-seller, but the last of his trauma is on the pages. Quinn’s ordinary life is now one of notable peace and simplicity. He uses adjectives like “mystical” or “rhythmic” to describe a life that requires little to no self-interference. Forgiveness necessarily enriches life. It necessarily enriches authorship too.
As a metaphysical law, the unforgiving author will be blinded. Narrow victim-perpetrator narratives never capture reality. Unforgiving authors will be tempted to look away from the uncomfortable things and people who give the story a wholistic quality. Not only that, but the forgiving heart is also free. It can dance. It can safely sift the place of memory unscathed. The facts of our lives are rich with literary quality, but the forgiving heart finds these facts more easily.
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