Forgiveness and Redemption

I have been thinking about forgiveness in recent weeks. It is not at all unusual for me to think about forgiveness. It is one of the topics I come back to over and over again in my internal and introspective life. And my internal and introspective life is very rich. I roll a lot of things over and over in my head. I focus guided meditations on them. I attempt to understand numerous things in life. I want to make a great number of things in life make sense. I want to discover ways in which they make sense to me with the faculties I have at my disposal. So I have been intensely thinking about forgiveness, off and on, for at least thirty years now. Forgiveness is extremely important to me. At present I seem to be spending a majority of my time thinking more specifically about self-forgiveness, something I believe both myself and many other people in the world need more of.

I was not thinking at all about forgiveness when I went to the Kitsap Regional Library earlier this week and checked out two DVD’s. Both DVD’s were produced in the 1980’s. I checked out an early season of Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury and I checked out the Roland Joffé directed film, The Mission, which came out in 1986.

In many ways I came of age, in the 1980’s. It is probably my favorite decade even though this decade also contained several of my deepest personal life tragedies and challenges. I started losing dear friends to AIDS in the 1980’s, for instance. And I also began to realize just how potentially devastating this disease was going to be for an entire community I was very connected to. I was in my twenties for the entire decade of the 80s. In all but the last two years of the 1980s I was either deeply thinking about or indeed studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood. In February of 1990 I turned thirty. A few months later I earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology. At that point my life took a very different turn in direction.

I typically lead a rather intense life both internally and externally. For the most part, though not always, I check out DVD’s from the library in order to spend some time outside of my very intense internal world and my equally intense external world. It is one of the very few ways I have easily available to me that allows me to relax and slow down my very active mind. The problem is that I do not enjoy cinematic “fluff” at all. I abhor romantic comedies, for example. It is a cinematic genre I wish would simply die a quick and painful death and be banished from the planet forever. On the other hand I am strongly drawn to American and especially foreign made dramas that have very complicated plots, even more complicated characters, deeply woven and interwoven tragedy, deep and thought provoking spiritual themes, good writing, a Christ like hero or heroine who almost always dies near or at the very end, and containing a very deep message that I can ponder for many hours after the final credits have rolled. So I am always faced with a conundrum when I go to check out DVD’s from the library. On the one hand I want something that will allow me to relax and simply be entertained. And on the other hand if my mind isn’t at least somewhat engaged I am completely bored and quickly lose interest.

Murder, She Wrote and The Mission, given this inherent conundrum, seemed like relatively good choices.

I started by working my way through the season of Murder, She Wrote. I enjoy the character of J.B. Fletcher, I believe Angela Lansbury is a superb actress, and I find most of the story lines to be engaging. However, I was soon reminded of a plot technique that is used in almost every single episode. Near the end, after Jessica Fletcher has solved the murder and confronts the murderer, the murderer usually gives a full confession often accompanied by an explanation of why he or she committed the murder. Occasionally, during this admission and reveal, the murderer also immediately begins a process of repentance, demonstrating an understanding of how a different, less violent route could have been chosen and thus sometimes the very first hints of a process of redemption is begun.

Last night I finally made my way to The Mission. Next year will mark thirty years since The Mission was first released.  I have seen this film at least twenty times. It has been in the top five of my all-time favorite movies list since its release. This film brings together, as do many of the films on my all-time favorite list do, all of my absolute favorite film elements, including exceptional acting and complex spiritual themes and characters. It is among a growing list of movies I watch over and over again and never tire of watching. I will likely continue to watch it until I take my last breaths in this body. This film is not a light film. However, since I have seen the film so many times and can practically recite all the lines, by memory, word for word, it is no longer an incredibly intense film for me to watch—though it still is somewhat intense for me. The film centers largely on the character of Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert DeNiro (in a superb and spellbinding performance where he is also, in my opinion, at the absolute height of his physical and masculine beauty), a former mercenary and slave trader in eighteenth century colonial Paraguay where the indigenous Guaraní  people are being pulled between the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, the Catholic church, and The Catholic Jesuit order. DeNiro’s character is a former mercenary and slave trader because about halfway through the film he has a spiritual awakening/redemption experience that results in his beginning the process of becoming a Jesuit priest. This awakening and redemption process is unwittingly brought on by his murdering someone he loved very much—his younger brother. These two scenes (the breakthrough spiritual awakening and redemption scene and the murder scene) even after all the many times I have seen this film, still bring tears to my eyes, every single time I view this film. This is because both scenes are so poignant and so well-acted and also because they each connect to a couple of very strong personal experiences in my own life.

After watching 80% of the Murder, She Wrote episodes and after watching The Mission, once again, I found myself thrown headlong back into deep thoughts about forgiveness, which ironically was exactly what I was trying to get a reprieve from. I guess I should have chosen my DVD picks more wisely. However, that’s OK. I like where these two DVD’s have taken me in terms of my current thoughts about forgiveness.

The Murder, She Wrote episodes got me thinking about the issue of self-forgiveness in some of the most extreme situations possible for human beings to find ourselves—forgiving ourselves for killing another person, or for possibly killing a number of people—something that someone like a war veteran might be dealing with. There was also an episode in this collection of Murder, She Wrote episodes in which a man had decided to take his own life though have it look like a murder so that his family, who would be left behind, would still qualify for the sizeable life insurance policy settlement they would get. There was a plot twist in this episode that had two characters living with deep guilt for decades for the roles they unexpectedly played in the dead man’s plans.

In The Mission I have already mentioned how the Robert DeNiro character became submerged into deep, agonizing guilt and shame after he kills his younger brother whom he loved dearly. This character believed there was no way he could possibly experience anything close to redemption for this act. Yet it was the love and care from members of the Guaraní tribe, people he had killed and had led into slavery, during his time as a mercenary and slave trader, who ultimately also played an important role in his own self forgiveness, largely because they were able to forgive him for his past deeds. However, the film made the extremely important point of making it very clear that it was not the love and care he received that led to his redemption, but rather his own self forgiveness. 

And as all of the Murder, She Wrote episodes present, admission of what we have done is perhaps the first step in the self-forgiveness and redemption process. Some of us are angry or cold-hearted (or both) or sociopathic enough to admit our faults and not have this not at all impact us deeply enough to begin the process of self-forgiveness. I however, believe and even larger number of us are like the Robert DeNiro character in The Mission. We simply feel so much guilt and shame or otherwise are so incredibly hard on ourselves we simply will not allow self-forgiveness nor redemption in. We do not believe we deserve to be forgiven.

Here is where I believe one of the foundational tenets of Christianity is extremely useful, even for those of us who are not Christian, even for those of us who are atheist. Yes. That tenet states that nothing, (that is no thing, including paralyzing guilt and shame), can separate us from the love of God. Nothing! If you call yourself a Christian, I believe this is the only Christian teaching you need to deeply believe in. It seamlessly leads to every other useful Christian teaching and teaching of Jesus himself! If we are non-Christian or atheist, we can simply change that to an understanding that, universal love can never be separated from itself and a very deep understanding that we, every single one of us, is a unique expression of universal love. So then we have, Universal Love understands that nothing we can do can ever separate itself from us and us from it. Never! This is the truth, the way, and the life. Any other belief equals death for us in some way, shape, or form. I understand that often we have done things that are extremely difficult for us to believe we can be forgiven for. I have done things I tell myself I cannot be forgiven for. And yet I am also a man of faith. And so I tell myself that I believe that, nothing can separate us from the love of God. I must be lying to myself or not truly believing that somehow. It doesn’t say that nothing can separate us from the laws of man, or the unforgiving nature of man or woman, or the conscious or unconscious guilting and shaming of man or women. No! It says, nothing can separate us from the love of God (i.e.—Universal Love understands that nothing we can do can ever separate itself from us and us from it. Never!)

May you find forgiveness of self and of all applicable others and for all life situations, circumstances, and realities that have negatively impacted your life or that are believed to have negatively impacted your life. May you find the ever flowing fountain of self-love that is always available to you. May you find caressing touch of redemption. May you be free. And may you help others find the path of freedom. AMEN!

Art by Ahmedshadow