Risk Factor

September 30, 2012

Dear Dee:

What can I say? I was fairly well blown away by your chalice lighting. It was so well written and filled with such a generosity of spirit. It brought tears to my eyes. I have often wondered if anyone could possibly understand the level of shame and regret that I feel over what I have done. Having read your words, I now know that there is at least one who does. I wish I could have been there to hear those words spoken and join with those who showered you with hugs. Thank you for seizing the opportunity to speak openly about such a sore and tender subject.

            Thanks for sending the conditions of my supervised release. No surprises there as it is as it was laid down by the judge at sentencing. I will definitely appeal to the probation officer about a computer and Internet access as they are essential tools for my writing. I will also appeal the ban on being able to go to the movies. You know how much I love that and, honestly, it seems so arbitrary. As long as I agree to stay away from kiddie matinees, limiting myself to 10 p.m. shows on Wednesday nights, it shouldn’t pose much risk. Of course, you and I know there is no risk at all at any time but they don’t know that. They don’t mention other places such as malls or fast food restaurants where young people tend to gather. All of this had no relationship to what I did (except the Internet part) but it is based on what a judge was able to imagine what I might do. I just hope I draw a probation officer who is open to dealing on these issues.

            When I gave my friend here the “Process Theology” sermon, I told him I was not trying to dissuade him from his own beliefs but to make it clearer to him what mine were. After he read it, he said that we could “agree to disagree.” I don’t think he found much merit to it. He is so immersed in his fundamentalist Christianity that, if it isn’t in the bible, it isn’t true. What I love so much about Unitarian Universalism is that it doesn’t just permit us to question, it requires it of us. Those who see the bible as the “undisputed word of God” don’t seem to want to acknowledge that it was written by mortal men and subject to all their personal agendas and prejudices. How else could we end up with Leviticus 20:13, which urges us to kill all gay people – and blame them for it.

            Your New England vacation plans sound wonderful. Please don’t worry about how I’ll react to news of your fun times. I do not despair about how free people spend their lives. I might envy it a bit but that’s okay. (I also envy your Samsung Galaxy Tablet. How could I not?)

Church – The chalice lighting was a very well written piece by ME titled “Role of Life,” in which she used the rules for mountain-biking as a metaphor for living. The one that resonated the most for me was, “When you have fallen off your bike and landed on your backside in cactus, you really find out who your friends are.”

            The sermon by Daniel Gregoire talked about beginnings and how he stumbled onto UU almost accidentally, leading him not only toward a new faith but a ministry in it. It’s relevance to me was that I would probably never have come to UU if I hadn’t done what I did that brought me here. My arrest and the very public humiliation that followed made me realize how bereft my life was of spirituality and created a very real need for me to reach out and grab onto something. It’s quite common, from what I’ve seen in here, though most tend to gravitate toward a more traditional Christian faith. For me, it still needed to make sense and UU fit the bill perfectly, allowing me the latitude to search through what I did and did not believe.

            The section I read from Peter Fleck’s book was a wonderful piece on our tendency to deny reality under adversity until such time as we are no longer able to. I want to Xerox it and send it to my friend Eric, who still struggles with what he did and why he is inside. I think it might help him.

            That’s it from me. Now go see the leaves and enjoy all that beauty.

Love, Steve

Dee's blog, but who is Dee?

September 12, 2012

Dear Reader,

My friend was about 2 and 1/2 years into his 6½-year ordeal in September of 2012. His weekly letters to me had drawn me into his psyche. I’d gotten an intimate view of his shame, his regret, his despair. I’d felt his longing to once again be regarded as a worthwhile human being; I’d felt his fear of the future that awaited him upon his release.  One day in September of 2012, I learned that my local UU minister was going to do a service on forgiveness. Each of our services included a personal reflection as the chalice lighting. Forgiveness had been a topic at the forefront of my mind for over two years and I felt compelled to share my thoughts, even though I was petrified at the prospect of doing so. I thought that it was the one small thing I could do to raise awareness and understanding of someone in Steve’s situation. This is the reflection that I gave in front of the approximately 400 people who attended the service:

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about forgiveness in the last couple of years—ever since the day when my ex-husband and the father of my daughter was arrested. With too much time on his hands and an active imagination, he began to play a character in chat rooms—a character who exchanged emails containing child pornography pictures. He thought it was just a naughty, secret game he was playing.

He has expressed his deep and unrelenting regret countless times in letters to me. He has struggled to retain a shred of self-respect in knowing that he would never actually abuse a child physically or otherwise. He has come face-to-face with the realization that self-forgiveness is really the hardest. He has come face-to-face with his shadow self.

After reviewing some writings of Carl Jung, he wrote to me these words: “Learning about the ‘shadow self’ has gone a long way toward helping me reconcile myself with what I did. Prior to accessing this material, I was in a considerable quandary. I have always regarded myself as a ‘good person.’So how does a good person end up doing such a terrible thing? A thing that leaves his life in ruin? A thing that violates, to the core, his entire moral center?

I have always loved children and have always believed that they should be cherished and protected. So, what led me to do what I did, to participate--even from afar--in the abuse and exploitation of innocent children?

I’ve spent time analyzing the impact of  my verbally abusive father and my neglectful mother, but the answer is that neither I, nor anyone else, is wholly a good person. Nor is anyone completely bad. We are, all of us, creatures of both darkness and light. I let the darkness come out to play. I didn't take the steps I should have taken to insure that the light prevailed in my life. I'll never make that mistake again,” he wrote.

So, for me,  the question became: Could I forgive him? Could I help my daughter to forgive him?

Probably, you can relate to having hurt someone’s feelings or having influenced someone negatively during one night of recklessness, or, because of inertia or laziness, having missed an opportunity that you could not reclaim. I can think of times I was haunted by just having said the wrong thing or not saying the thing I should have said. Times when I was careless and something terrible almost happened stand out in my memory.

How much worse must it be to live with a regret for mistakes that do not blow over, living with a deed whose effects you cannot take back or alter? What is left when that happens? Society never forgives you. I think all that is left is seeking a place where you can exist in a culture of forgiveness.

As it turns out, I have become a major source of moral support for Steven Kent, my ex-husband, who I now call my good friend, and, along with the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship Prison Ministry program, I’ve been able to enrich his bleak life with the knowledge that the Unitarian Universalist movement offers one place on the outside where he might feel like he could belong and be welcomed when he finally gets out of prison—at its best, a place where we can all find some sanctuary from the eternal judgment of society and of self-righteous people.

I light the chalice for all places with a culture of forgiveness.

As I reveal in my chalice lighting but have not hitherto revealed in this blog, my true relationship with Steve is not only as a friend, but also as the man I chose to marry some 40 years prior and the father of my child. And I forgive him.

Yours truly,

Dee Ray