A Fierce Heart by Spring Washam

Author:Spring Washam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parallax Press
Published: 2017-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

—NELSON MANDELA

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FREE YOUR HEART

I HAVE BEEN BLESSED OVER THE YEARS to have encountered many beautiful saints and several powerful demons. The saints have shown me by their living example that forgiveness is possible, but it’s been the demons that have challenged me to put everything I hold sacred into practice. That is what demons are for; they sometimes appear in disguises, and at other times they appear clearly labeled, offering us an invitation on to the dark path for a period of time. In whatever manifestation or form they take, what they offer us is the bitterest medicine and the hardest lessons. Like a metal sword being crafted in hot coals, our own strength is also forged through the fires of hell. Inevitably what we learn from all demons is how to love, how to forgive, and how to reclaim our own power.

As an African American woman, practicing forgiveness keeps me from being consumed by anger. People die from hatred. I beg you not to become one of them. Forgiving everyone for everything is my only practice these days. The heart wants to be free and the only way is by letting go of the resentments we carry from the past. This chapter is deeply personal and was difficult to write, but you’ll discover that my stories are familiar ones. I have nothing new to say because we all know these truths in our bones. These are the struggles of our people and the struggle of humankind.

My Tibetan teacher Mingier Rinpoche would always say, “Be thankful for your enemies. They teach you everything about compassion and patience.” To be thinking of people who have done great harm in that way is a radical shift. We can use painful experiences to evoke compassion. César Chávez, who endured so much while leading the farm workers movement said, “We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.”1 My journey into forgiveness has always been about enduring.

At the age of twenty-four, after twenty-one years of separation, I was reunited with my biological father. I only had two clear memories of him and I cherished both of them. I remember once when he took me to get some ice cream. He was smiling at me as I sat in the front seat of his car, licking a gigantic vanilla ice cream cone. The other vivid memory is of him popping in unexpectedly one night to pay us a visit. I jumped straight onto his lap and, feeling so happy to see him, I wrapped my tiny arms around his neck. When it came time for him to go, I cried and begged him to stay. I hid his hat to keep him from leaving, but he found it and headed out the door again. He was always leaving.

I genuinely missed him throughout my life; his absence had a deep impact on me. My mother would describe him as an unstable, selfish man who had abandoned us.

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