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
