Full Moon: Consolations

on forgiveness

Sunset walks are a consolation. Our lakes have little snow and have now finally frozen. Here is a couple taking advantage of the ice.

Today we arrive to the full moon of this month that I have dedicated to consolations, to reviewing the past year of Songs of Forgiveness, and to a life (Karlene’s - read her obituary here).

We are halfway through the moon’s cycle around us here on earth. The first part of the lunation, I have been putting efforts behind my intention. The intention setting with the new moon goes hand in hand with our regular story of greed, aversion and delusion. Setting intentions requires us to tune into what you want, what you don’t want, and what you think you should get done, in order to know where to focus efforts.

I have been balancing these poisons as I look back in order to move forward. Or trying anyway, as I come closer to my self-judgments, wishes of ways I should be different, and the misleading ways I think about myself.

And here I have reached the forgiveness side of the loop, where I turn away from the usual and bring in what is radical. I am to release the tensions of holding on, forgive in order to absolve myself of those trappings and let my gaze go wider.

Using David Whyte’s consolation on forgiveness, we can see forgiveness as an act of understanding ourselves better. We hone in on what hurt and why, so we can draw the circle bigger and include even more inside (this reminds me of how Karlene always worked to include). David Whyte says we “reimagine our relation to [the wound].” We draw ourself closer to integrate the story, it becomes a part of us. The part that never actually forgives, and will always remember. The wound doesn’t change, instead we change around that wound. It becomes a part of our very nature, like the burl of a tree.

In that way, it is forgiveness that draws us naturally to nuance. Because the self who forgives, has grown beyond the self that was wounded in the first place. Our history is recorded in those scars, along with our changes. We can reimagine our past and revision our future with each forgiveness that comes along. Forgiveness helps us to understand that we have identities without end and, by that measure, we have lifetimes without end.

When I am here in this moment, considering the release of these tensions, I feel close to those that I’ve lost. Their dreams live on through these many identities that I am and through them, the many lifetimes I will have.

This brings me back to the work of Dr. Cindy Blackstock and her Breath of Life theory and her wish that we fall in love with our descendants seven generations into the future.