So once again I am looking for a second chance. My life has been full of them and also, from time to time, third, fourth, even fifth chances. I keep doing something until I get it right. As Mrs. Bullins, the art teacher at Chilhowie High School some years ago, once told me, "I know how we can fix this." What wonderful words to hear.
Recently I've been involved with an organization that surprised me in its unwillingness to offer anyone a second chance. You mess up, you're out. Good-bye. Hit the bricks. "No, I'm not apologizing." That's the way they dealt with anyone who acted in a way that did not meet the organizational norm. I grew increasingly burdened by this corporate attitude, and so now I am no longer a part of the organization. My philosophy is that second chances should come naturally to us, and I mean that all of us should, by common practice, offer forgiveness to any who mess up, even if what that person did caused great pain. I once apologized to a person who told me he would not accept the apology, and when I was a very young woman, I did the same thing to a woman who called me to apologize. Both times were extraordinarily painful for me; that's one reason they still float to the top of 62 years of memories.
Perhaps because I have erred so many times in my life, I have a great deal of sympathy for those who call up the strength to get out of a sleepless bed in the morning, fight back the ugly memories, get dressed, and go out to try again. I don't agree with Friedrich Neitzche that "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Many hurtful and painful things are not lethal, but those wounds can stunt growth, both spiritual and physical. The duress of pain can deform the spirit. We are not always stronger for having suffered. Surviving the pain does not necessarily make us stronger. A plant struggling to grow in a formidable environment will become pale, twisted, and weak. I don't want that to happen to my spirit.
The thing that makes us stronger is compassion for others who are hurting. Ease up a little, give the other guy a break. Something as minor as not getting angry at someone who is driving like a maniac can be exceptionally freeing. If you want to grow spiritually, let the hatred and the pain go; pray for release from the torture of carrying around every callous word spoken to you and every hurtful act. Give someone a second chance.
Newt Gingrich is the default expert on forgiveness. He seems to know the most about that topic currently, having asked the Catholic Church for forgiveness for adultery and the many hurts that he has caused others. Seems he forgot to ask his second wife for forgiveness.
A quote often attributed to Mark Twain says, "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." To me this does not sound like anything that Twain would ever have said; it is so absolutely well-written that it tickles my brain with its imagery, but it does not have the witty snap for which Twain is known. This phrase appears to be written by someone who sought and was granted forgiveness.
The perspective of the person who is doing the forgiving is better expressed by Edgar Watson Howe in Country Town Sayings (1911), "You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched." Only someone who has suffered through the healing of a tremendous hurt realizes that forgetting the quarrel is preferable, but the remaining scar is a tender reminder of how deep the hurt really was. Even if you don't dwell on the problem, memories pop up every now and then, tender to the touch. Things will not ever be as they were before.
My own experiences cause me to be astounded when a presidential candidate expresses that he went to the church and asked forgiveness for his many marital faux pas, as if that made every thing as it were before his indiscretions. Life is not like that. Behavior has consequences, both good and bad. Even when you're sorry about something you've done and been granted forgiveness, like the slimy trail of a slug on a sidewalk, the consequences of behaviors regretted remain for all the world to see.
Statements ascribed to Newt Gingrich are found all over the internet like fleas on an alley cat. The one that strikes me as being full of portent is the one about his then wife, Jackie, as found in an article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/politics/gingrich-divorce-file/
"Leonard H. "Kip" Carter, a former close Gingrich friend, backed the contention that it was Newt Gingrich who wanted the divorce. "He (Gingrich) said, 'You know and I know that she's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president,' " Carter, who now lives in South Carolina, told CNN recently, relating the conversation he had with Gingrich the day Gingrich revealed he was filing for divorce. Carter served as treasurer of Gingrich's first congressional campaigns. Carter, who was a fellow history professor when Gingrich taught at West Georgia College in Carrollton, said he broke off his friendship with Newt Gingrich because of the congressman's treatment of his wife during the divorce. Asked in an e-mail whether that conversation in 1980 occurred the way that Carter recounted, Gingrich spokesman Hammond did not respond."
This is foreshadowing at its height. After he left two wives, he settled with the blonde beauty that is seen with him now in every campaign photo, the ever-faithful Callista, whom, apparently, Newt Gingrich thinks is young enough and pretty enough to be the wife of a president. There she is, in all her blondness and Tiffany jewels, the becoming accessory, trotted out for the media like a trained dog, because, you see, Mr. Gingrich has wanted to be president for a very, very long time. Everything he has done during his adult life, from marriages to divorces, has been executed with this goal in mind.
If you have ever been forgiven of anything in your life (and I have many times), grace is certainly as sweet as the scent of violets. For those doing the forgiving, there are some ugly patches to sew on the thing, however. "Forgive and forget" is not ever truly possible, no matter how much we try. Just ask Marianne Gingrich.
