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Read or Listen to the poem Phase One, by Dilruba Ahmed, read by Padraig O’Touma
https://onbeing.org/poetry/phase-one/
In Dilruba Ahmed’s poem Phase One, we find a realistic, sometimes aching, exploration of forgiveness, particularly self-forgiveness. It’s interesting to ask, “Who’s speaking in this poem?” We overhear a conversation between a forgiving self and a self that struggles with forgiveness. One voice knows so much about Dilruba, but unlike herself offers “kindness rather than condemnation; freedom rather than restriction.” (Padraig O’Touma). And yet, this kind voice, also has to come through her voice and her understanding. It doesn’t require anything of her but nevertheless needs to be experienced. The poem is called Phase One because Dilruba begins to understand that she will never be able to live her life, with all its failings, and love others, if she can’t open her life to a forgiving God who incessantly comes and whispers, “I forgive you.” And the order is important.
1. First, forgiveness pours forth from heaven (“gushing from pipes”).
The path and power of forgiveness doesn’t begin with you, isn’t contingent upon you, but pours forth from heaven before you do or say anything. God is the source and power of forgiveness. If you can’t (forgive), always remember that God can.
To get forgiveness right, we need to first begin with Dilruba’s own surprising awareness about forgiveness – its mysterious abundance: “In forgotten tin cans, may forgiveness gather. Pooling in gutters. Gushing from pipes. A great steady rain of olives from branches.” This is a poet who has rightly encountered a without “cruelty and petty meanness.” Before one can fully comprehend forgiveness – especially self-forgiveness. One must become aware that God is always and ever forgiving.
King David agrees: Show me your ways . . . teach me your paths . . . . guide me in your truth . . . which is “great mercy and love” . . . NOT “remembering the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways . . . because of your love . . . for you are good.
David’s poem, Psalm 25:4-7, is a series of parallel lines that helps us understand what it means to know God’s ways, paths, truth. Each leads to “great mercy and love” which are once again clarified in a request to not “remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways.” Why? Not because he is contrite but because God is good. God doesn’t forgive us in some transactional way that is dependent upon us “doing” something. If so, David would say, “because of my contrition” or “because of my sorrow,” “because of my decision.” Rather, David recognizes that God does all these things because love and goodness are who God is. Forgiveness simply put IS God’s way, God’s path, and God’s truth.
Don’t let the poetic language fool you. We don’t need to remind God to forgive us. The purpose of the language is that we need reminding. We are the ones who forget. We often treat forgiveness like a scene from the movie Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner’s character is trying to get James Earl Jones, who plays a famous, reclusive author, to go with him on a road trip to find a long-lost baseball player. After he refuses, Costner pretends to kidnap him gunpoint by putting his finger in his pocket like a gun. Fed up, Jones comes at him with a crowbar, ready to strike Costner, who screams, “Wait! You’re a pacifist!” Jones blurts out an expletive, drops the crowbar, and walks away. Jones had to be reminded to live into his professed values – God does not. Dilruba reminds us that forgiveness reveals that our God is devoid of any “petty meanness.” And David would agree – that’s simply who God is.
The Catholic, Dominican philosopher, Herbert McCabe once said: “Never be deluded into thinking that if you have contrition, if you are sorry for your sins, God will come and forgive you---that he will be touched by your appeal, change his mind about you and forgive you. Not a bit of it. God never changes his mind about you. He is simply in love with you. What he does again and again is change your mind about him. That is why you are sorry. That is what your forgiveness is. You are not forgiven because you confess your sin. You confess your sin, recognize yourself for what you are, because you are forgiven. When you come to confession, to make a ritual proclamation of your sin, to symbolize that you know what you are, you are not coming in order to have your sins forgiven. You don't come to confession in order to have your sins forgiven. You come to celebrate that your sins are forgiven.” McCabe is correct – you have to the order right!
But what about 1 John 1:9? Doesn’t this seem to demand that we do something first? No. This is a Greek construction in which the phrase “he is just and will forgive us our sins” is the main point. Our confession is evidence for that fact not the cause. That’s why John states in 2:12 “your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.” That truth precedes our confession. So you should read 1 John 1:8-9 like this:
“If we freely, openly, and publicly declare our sins, this shows (is grounds for concluding) that God is faithful and righteous, that He would forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that leads me to my second point.
2. Second, claim sin and let it go because love is at stake.
It’s probably worth, at this point, hazarding a definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness is no longer holding something harming (against yourself or others) without necessarily letting go of having been harmed. Forgiveness is not a forgetfulness that allows abuse or harm to continue. It does, however, seek to disarm the harm, in the first place. Harm matters. Yes, forgiveness is always disarming but the weapons and seriousness of the harm can look very different. The person who seeks to forgive themselves for harming another, the person who asks for forgiveness for gossiping about someone else, and the person who attempts to forgive someone who is currently abusive, are all dealing with different weapons and degrees of harm. Dilruba’s poem is about self-forgiveness, but despite these differences, a couple of things seem true for everyone.
First, forgiveness involves truth-telling – a real and acknowledged wrestling with harm and hurt. The ones who best seem to understand forgiveness have an incredible ability to name painful things without excuse or denial. You can hear it in the poem when Dilruba ruthlessly admits to painful realities of neglecting her baby, repeatedly making mistakes, she says, “again” and “again,” and even: “For treating your mother with contempt when she deserved compassion” which receives a three-fold “I forgive you.” Likewise, 1 John 1:8 declares, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” You truly understand the truth of forgiveness, when you can unabashedly, confess your sins. If love is what is seeking to find you, you have no reason to hide. If the truth of love is in you, in other words, you will admit your sin.
Second, forgiveness is both freedom from and freedom for. Dilruba’s poem evokes the things we hold against ourselves, the things that prevent us from being loving because we’re so caught up in stories of failure and accusation; some deserved, some not. Regardless, we need to be free of these things, otherwise they drag us down. In the movie The Mission, Robert De Niro plays a conquistador who brutally mistreats those around him only to have a conversion experience which allows him to recognize the harm he has done. In repentance, he seeks to climb a mountain dragging all the trappings of his violent past behind him – his armor and sword – in a bag.
After days of dragging it up a steep cliff and on the verge of exhaustion and death, one of the indigenous Amerindians, who he mistreated, takes a knife and cuts him free. But, that’s not the end. We also need forgiveness so that we can move toward things, so that we can become more alive and more loving. We need forgiveness because a perpetual, obsessive unworthiness appears to be the perfect vehicle for harming a person, to keep us from living, to stop us from loving. The function of sin, in my experience, isn’t so much to make us bad but to make us busy and blind – caught up in our own self-narratives of shame and unaware of the needs of others. Hence, the Psalmist prays to be “shown,” and ask for God to “guide” toward forgiveness. Augustine says that the purpose of the Christian life is the “healing of the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.” Toward that end, Dilruba is right, forgiveness isn’t our destination – responding to the love of God, living a life of love, is, without being endlessly distracted by a list of failures and failings – again and again. That’s the meaning behind the title “Phase One.” Dilruba reminds us that you need “to forgive yourself first so you could then forgive others and at last find away to become the love you want in this world.” Forgiveness is always recognizing in the end that sin isn’t the most important thing about you, that love is. The divine love which is the source of forgiveness aims to free us for love, moving toward kindness rather than condemnation, freedom rather than restriction.
Dilruba Ahmed writes: “It can be difficult to be kind to yourself. Even writing those words, I feel awkward, as if kindness towards myself is a luxury. Sometimes a poem helps me step outside myself and let some wiser voice speak back to me, looking at my own failures with clear eyes, offering understanding and compassion, This, too, is a certain kind of bravery.”
So I want to invite you this morning to be brave. To remember that forgiveness is pouring forth all around you from a God who in Christ Jesus shows no cruelty or petty meanness. That through the cross, God has already forgiven you. And because of that – you can name anything and everything that seeks to drag you down. You don’t need to hide. It’s love that beckons. It’s love that frees. It’s love that is offered so that you too, can love. The Apostle Paul nails it. He declares, “It’s God’ kindness that leads us to repentance.” We’re going to spend time remembering that this morning. We’re going to hear from the poem again and then Harris is going to sing a new song called Kind. And as he does so, I want to invite you forward this morning to remember your baptism. I want to invite you forward to touch the waters and remember that all your sin, has been buried with Christ, drowned in a sea of love. Perhaps as you touch the water you might need to name that which is dragging you down and keeping you from loving God, yourself, or others. I want you to come, touch the pooling waters of forgiveness, remember, and hear the voice of God saying “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.” That’s Phase One - the deep recognition that God has already forgiven you in Jesus Christ and that all God has ever been is kind.
Listen to the poem Phase One, by Dilruba Ahmed, again, read by Padraig O’Touma
Click to listen to the song Kind by Cory Asbury
