Forgiveness and Other Impossible Feats

First, let's talk repentance. The concept itself, that favorite of Christian words, guards the entrance to Heaven (any figurative peace). It's a juggernaut, a wide-mouthed Faustian trickster. Religion would have us believe that in order to repent, to purge, one must open a 2g connection with the divine. He/she, in kind, litters our path to redemption with hurdles, burs, and patches of glittery danger. Much like the prince that fords the thorn-ridden forest to rescue Sleeping Beauty, a soul must traverse, wear to exhaustion before any real conversation about repentance begins. Then comes forgiveness.

I struggle with this one. Self-immolation: I have down. But to forgive--with its gnarled sister, forgetting--stumps me. For example, a member of my family has been wronged, big time. The accused has never been my favorite, or even mildly welcome into my life. He baffles me. He purloins himself at every turn. And now this, this huge bundle of madness brought about through a series of selfish decisions on the accused's part, his net of sin thrown wide, traps those in his life, drug kicking and screaming into a dilemma. For his part, the path to repentance began months ago. My father admonishes me, with the aid of scripture, to withhold judgment and start to forgive.

I've consulted dictionaries, thesaurus', the Koran, Bhagavad gita, Old Testament and New, Facebook and The Onion, old letters and new: nothing is conclusive about how or when to forgive, which leaves it up to me, as all those slippery indicatives are apt to do. I know forgiveness means absolving, to some level. I know it means that I carve off a piece of compassion and set it forth. I know that I must make eye contact, hold it, hold it longer, and let the waste of anger slide down the walls of my brain. I know patience, with its salty tongue, will ask things from me. I know very little, though, about what good it does to let my fury abate, unfulfilled and cowed. My close friends need very little forgiving, and with them, the give and take is simple.

Perhaps it is in this singular experience of forgiveness, upon which I've sacrificed too much of my thinking and energy, that I have no map to follow. Does he deserve my empathy? Of course. Has he asked for it? No, and why should he? But to incite a directive from the cosmos is to stumble for light years. I've awakened this sleeping giant; I've dangled food at its face; I've stumbled upon a question so large that I barely recognize the disparate paradoxes in my crumpled paradigm. To go back now, to start at the simple things, those rudimentary feelings and emotions, is to shut the whole factory down to examine a rusty nail, a smudged thumbprint of little concern.

So I'll do my best. Go forth and do. I'll take baby-steps and teaspoons of caution. And I will do it all for the sake of myself. As for him, he's on his own, precariously perched at a cliff of his own making, or comfortable with yard markers and repentance in sight. If he asks, I'll just say I am busy making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and the time is running out.