Two words in Hebrew. סלח לנו, forgive us. It is a plea for forgiveness, but from whom, and from where? What does this mean, “forgive us?” 

I think forgiveness is a deeply personal concept. But it is also a concept that expands beyond the person. It requires us to step outside of ourselves. Whether we are forgiving ourselves or the other, we are still required to step outside and look back in. I believe we are required to find the song within forgiveness. I believe that we need to be able to hear the song that helps bring us outside of ourselves so we can look at that which we need to reconcile with. That thing for which we need to find forgiveness. Be that with ourselves or with someone else.

I grew up in a small Wisconsin city, Appleton, Wisconsin. I was born in 1955. It was a time and place where hatred burned under the cloak of civility and conventionality. If you were able to blend in, and look, and act, and sound, and seem like everyone else, then you were a “regular fella,” and you were ok. But if you couldn’t blend in, because of the color of your skin, or the clothes that you wore, or the house of worship that you went to, or the people who you loved, then you were the recipient of hate. 

Most of the time, it was a “Civil Hate,” molded by those who had the privilege of power, and wielded upon those who felt helpless to oppose it. This was Appleton, where I grew up. Nationally,  it was not so civil. Like an overripe volcano, it would blow up in an explosion of suffocating darkness. People were hurt. People were excluded. But in lily-white Appleton, those were problems “that we didn’t have because everyone here is the same,” except we weren’t. And this is what brings me to thoughts about forgiveness. 

Forgiveness, then, was only allowed when people became just like everyone else. If someone couldn’t be just like everyone else, because of the color of their skin or their beliefs or whatever, they were excluded, marked, and sometimes, sadly, punished for the crime of being different. It was a time when darkness masqueraded as light. When darkness masqueraded as the normal of ”well, this is how things just exist.” It was a time when all the signs screamed out, “No YOU’s Allowed,” regardless of to whom that YOU was being applied. 

סלח לנו.

Forgive us. Forgive us for being different from you was how it felt to a young girl living in a time when conformity was the law. Forgiveness was conditional on me complying with them, to it, to something that was not me. Because to forgive, I felt, I had to step outside myself to see the other way to be. To be able to see that which needed to be forgiven. And to be able to see that which was within myself that needed to be reconciled with. How was I supposed to forgive myself for being myself, when it was just different from what everyone else wanted me to be?

But that was then. Now I feel like we live in a time where the darkness of hatred surrounds not just one little person, not just one little town, not just one little city, not just one little state, not just one little country, but it surrounds the entire world. “You are not me, so I cannot forgive you for your identity!” So screams everyone, or so it seems to me. And the darkness glows and grows, cleverly expanding and suffocating our ability to really see the other and really accept each other for who we each need to be in this world of ours.  

August Strindberg wrote, in his play Easter, that the copper telephone wires screamed their static in protest against the gossip and the lies that were being spoken over them. Today we no longer have copper telephone wires to scream out their indignation. Transmission of data is seamless over the air, over the ether, over the Internet. Over the formless darkness that demands either our conformity or our destruction.. There are no more copper wires to protest the lies or the hatred that flows these days. It is so easy to make the lies look like truth. “Did that person really say that? Did they really do that? I saw it in a video, so it must be the truth.” It is all so seamless and clear. There is no static, no scratches in the film, to show that it is all made up.  

So that is what brings me to the thought of forgiveness. To me, forgiveness is the song that allows us to see hatred and gossip and lies for what they really do to us. To see through the darkness that separates us and tries to blot out forgiveness. The darkness that tries to blot out our identities and our hearts. For the hatred that seals us inside the darkness of our own graves, alone, cut off, extinguished. For the conformity that requires that we all be like everyone else. To me, true forgiveness is unconditional and only comes when we are willing to accept each other. With our flaws, yes, but also with a sincere desire to change the things we need to change and to make things better again. 

For me to be able to forgive myself, or ask someone else to forgive me, I need to be able to ‘stand outside myself,’ so to speak, to see, objectively, what I need forgiveness for. To me, without being able to honestly understand the hurt that I caused, I am not able to really ask for a sincere and honest forgiveness. Nor am I really able to give a sincere and honest acceptance if the “other” is not able to see the hurt that they/I caused. The song of forgiveness needs to be truly open and fearless. It needs both the forgiver and the seeker of forgiveness to be able to stand in the place of objectively seeing the other from the outside and to be able to truly accept what it was that was done wrong. For both people to be able to move out of the darkness of separateness and truly see each other.

To me, forgiveness is the song that lights the candle that begins to push away that darkness. Maybe it is a small light now. Maybe it feels like darkness will win. But maybe, as each of us finds our own song to light our own candle of forgiveness, and we all join our lights together, maybe then we will prevail. Maybe then we will all see we are all truly one. Maybe then we will see the forgiveness in each of us. Maybe then we will all see forgiveness for ourselves. And maybe then the darkness will fade. And maybe then people will be able to be who they truly are, free and beautiful, and they will shine their own light and song of forgiveness to the world. And maybe then, we will truly see that we are really all one people, and one love.

And to that, I will always say: ‏סלח לנו

Forgive us.