For Our Daughters in Nigeria

I can’t reduce it to a meme or a hashtag. I understand the intent behind it and it’s well intended but I simply can’t. They are human beings, they are someone’s daughters and sisters, they are my daughters, they are your sisters. They were taken, they are being sold, they are being raped, they are being married against their will. Why? Because they wanted to learn, because they wanted to live their potential not hide their light. They are being used as pawns in a global game of fear and the inhumanity of that appalls me and I can’t reduce it to a catchy phrase. No hashtag can contain their pain or the loss their families feel. The only thing that can contain it is the outstretched arms of our love. The only thing that can reach them now is our global, resounding no. Not this time, not our girls, not our family, not our world.

We will not be held hostage by your hate. We will meet your forces with the forces of love. We will meet your fear with forgiveness.

We can do this because we know you are also part of our family, a part we don’t want to look at, or own. But it is time for our family to come together as one and heal. To call back the ones who have strayed into darkness. To surround them not with the arms of war, but with the open arms of love, to surround them with the light of that love so that there is no darkness to hide in, so that the truth is illuminated.

We are one. They are our daughters. Release them. Then let us all heal together in the light.

Maria

This is a story I wrote a few years ago. It wasn't an easy story to write and I don't think it's an easy story to read, but I think it carries a powerful message of love and forgiveness.

The story came to me in an unexpected way. I was standing in a classroom looking through a book that a little boy had brought back with him from a visit to see family in Poland. As I flipped through the pages I came to a photograph of a building from the perspective of standing on a set of railroad tracks. I didn't know what the building was but all the sudden it was as if I was transported to another time and place. I could hear the sounds of the train and of other people, I could feel fear and smell the scent of a smoke I didn't want to identify. My eyes filled with tears. I knew I couldn't stay in that place at that moment, but knew I would have to go back to it and write the story that was waiting. When I brought my attention back to the book in my hands and looked at the caption, I found that it was a photograph of the tracks leading into Auschwitz. 

It took me two sittings to write the story because I could feel what happened and just didn't want to finish it and so have to experience it even in some small way. So I waited until I was ready to hear the rest of it and then just surrendered to the story. In a difficult way, I'm very glad I did. I hope it moves you as it did me. 


Maria 
by Lynda Allen

I can feel the rumble of the train in my body and I can smell that scent that I can’t identify on the air, an acrid smoke that stops my breath with fear and I don’t know why.  Hundreds of eyes are crammed close together trying to see and yet knowing that they don’t want to see what approaches.  So they try to look behind us to get a last glimpse of a world they can understand, a last breath of air that is clean.  But it’s too late, there is nothing clean anymore.  All is grey and lost and full of hate.  You cannot feel any humans around the train at the station because the souls that would give them true life have left what would have been their bodies far behind in the horror on the ground.  If the weight in their hearts can be described, I haven’t the words for it.  All that is describable is the screeching of the wheels, iron upon iron, the hissing release of the steam and smoke; even that sinks slowly to the ground rather than drifting toward a heaven that can’t be felt in this place.

On the train their hope sank too, in each heart but one, for there is always one, one who would dream and see beyond, to where the smoke can’t venture.  If not for that one, things might have been different now, they might even be different in some alternate version of what happened here, who knows.  Maybe in another universe they broke her spirit, but in this one, thank God, she held fast, body and Spirit joined and whole.  Because of her I exist to hold the memory of that place.  While that is not a role I would have chosen; to be the keeper of the memory of horror, still someone must live on to speak the truth of it or none would believe it could be true and it could happen again.  Even so, it has happened again.  Have I failed in my mission since now there must be another and another who hold the horror of another place?  I could not have let her down, I could not.  I speak the story again and again of this place called Auschwitz.  Sometimes I speak it at night to her when she visits me in my dreams.  I try to convince her that it was not in vain, but it is me that I’m trying to convince for the horror lives on.  Does the story being told bring it back to life?  Or does it help in some small way to prevent a repetition?  Her eyes give me no answer but they do dance with joy.  She has found peace.  Perhaps I should have found mine there too, often I wish I had.  But if by my story one less person feels the rumble of a train they can’t stop, then my peace must be found in that for now.  One day I will share her joy and tell my story no more, for it will no longer be needed.  Clean again all.
___________

She had no tears that day.  Her eyes were open and dry though tears flowed all around her.  She knew the purpose of this place, within her being she knew.  Yet she met their eyes, those who would actually look.  Most didn’t look on purpose because few ever looked back, so they hadn’t expected to meet her eyes.  Then it was they who had to look away when their eyes met.  They could not withstand the light they found there, the angle of how she held her head.  It was not anger or defiance or fear in her demeanor, it was freedom, freedom despite the crush of humans, despite the scent of fear and death, despite the hard barrels of guns and harsh voices.  She was free and they could see that. 

They could not understand it though for they were not free themselves.  In their way they were as trapped as those they imprisoned.  They would not be released soon by death but would be imprisoned in the cells of their memories of what they had done for the rest of their lives.  She knew that, she saw that in them.  She saw the shells they had become, souls gone in sorrow.  And she forgave them.  In her freedom came the gift of forgiveness, even before the crime had been committed she forgave them.  She forgave them for every life they had extinguished.  And so they feared her.  She who brought light and forgiveness was the one they feared the most.  It was the path they didn’t know how to walk for themselves and there she was showing it to them, showing them compassion.

There was only one that day who could meet her eyes even briefly.  His name was Josef.  He saw her moving forward, the only one with her eyes looking ahead instead of down.  She held his glance and he saw his fate in that instant, he knew he would choose it. He didn’t know how he would find the courage but he knew that it would be there when he needed it.  Many days after that day he tried to deny it, he tried to tell himself he imagined it but each time he saw her he knew it afresh.

Normally there would not have been many days between her arrival and her death, but that was how much they feared her.  They found reasons to let her live while those around her were called forward and never returned.  Never did her eyes waver.  So they tried unsuccessfully to break her.

It was not that she had left her body in this place and yet she was somehow distant.  She had her feet on the ground and could feel the pain of the Earth in this place.  She could feel the collective fear and hatred and ache, but she could feel more strongly the truth within her, the truth of the hearts of all who passed through this place and who were becoming this place.  She did not carry their pain for them but somehow allowed it to leave them through her a little. Somehow she helped lighten the collective pain simply by being and knowing her truth.

She loved them all in a way that did not seem possible.  Those going to their deaths gladly received her love and carried it with them on their journey.  Those who led them to their deaths couldn’t look at her love let alone receive it.  All those except Josef, that is.  He received her love and she gave it freely each time she saw him.  I don’t know if she too knew what he would do when her turn came.  Maybe she did but didn’t know the courage would be there like he did.  It did not distract her even if she did know. She went about her daily assignments and tasks as if it were a normal day, not the day she might die at the hands of those who hated her without reason.  She did not do her work cheerfully but with dignity and grace.  That was what her name might have been if one could have chosen it for her at that point, Grace, but it was Maria.  She carried her light with her to each task and that was all she did.

Finally, they could stand the light no more. They couldn’t look at it or extinguish it and it drove them mad, so one stepped forward to make the choice.  It was Josef.  He led her that day to the gas chamber and as with all things she walked forward with eyes ahead and light and forgiveness in them.  He waited beside her as she, with the others, took off her clothes, the last remnants of their protection and dignity.  She turned to look at him and he looked back, full in her eyes.

He did not take his eyes off hers as he bent to lay down his gun at her feet. He did not take his eyes off hers as he removed his own clothes.  He did not take his eyes off hers as he took her hand and walked with her into that chamber.

Not one other guard moved.  They stood in shock as he walked away.  No one thought to pick up his gun and use it, so resigned were they to their fate.  They were grateful to be near her at this moment of their deaths.  As was he.  Together they stood hand in hand as the door closed behind them, a finality to the sound of the lock moving into place.

There were no tears in the group that day, no pleas for mercy, no terror. They were all lost in the two that were at the center of the room.  All lifted up by the connection found there, the truth revealed in hearts met that knew they were one, no matter their assigned roles or places of birth.

With Grace they died that day and for a moment, or an eternity, brought Grace to a place that never thought to see it again.  Still it lingers in the sound of the wind in the trees around that home of sorrow, lightening it in some way, allowing it to move and be Free - as she was Free.

Unconditional Forgiveness

I shared this quote recently; One forgives to the degree that one loves. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld. I know I shared it because somewhere in my life I needed to look at it, but I kind of wish I hadn’t! The thing that struck me was if I am attempting to live a path of unconditional love then that would mean there must be also unconditional forgiveness. When I step back I think maybe they are actually one in the same thing. Unconditional forgiveness is a form of unconditional love, not just spoken or thought in theory but put into action.

A reminder I received on my walk made it all very simple - simple to understand, not necessarily simple to live in human form. As I approached home I came upon the number two on the ground before me. I won’t go into the whole long explanation here about the significance of that number to me, but the gist of the reminder was that I am an expression of Spirit. What I’ve learned about that truth is that there is no work to it, only a being of it. And so in that being, the very need for forgiveness falls away.

All well and good I said to the Spirit within me, but what do I do with all those very human emotions that come along with whatever incidents create a perceived need for forgiveness? Am I simply to put those feelings aside as if they never existed? I knew that wasn’t what I was to learn from the idea.

The feelings exist in this very beautiful, human expression and so their existence needs to be acknowledged, not ignored. Where the learning is I believe, is in returning to that core of Spirit within me and witnessing those feelings, even flat out feeling them and yet recognizing them as feelings and not the truth of the situation. Then from that place of unconditional love within, I can gently look at the roots of those feelings.

It seems to me that when I look at the roots of any distressing emotions I’m experiencing they always lead to the same place, a fear of separation. If I can then look at those roots from that place of Spirit within me where I am in fact One with Spirit, then I know the falsity of the idea of separation and can begin to pull that idea out by its roots.

That’s not the end of it, however much my mind would like it to be. If I follow the range of emotions that grow from the roots I will see where that lack of forgiveness, lack of unconditional love, branched out reaching for others. I see them pointing to another and saying, it is you who separated me from (insert almost any word here) love, family, success, friendship, etc. If I can see with the eyes of unconditional love though, I can look at the individual I had been pointing at, with the same knowing of truth I had in looking at the roots. I can see that not only did they not separate me from any of those things, because there is no separation, but I can look at them and know that we are not separate either.

In seeing from unconditional love I create the space for unconditional forgiveness. Which in the end brings me gently full circle to the conclusion that if I am fully living from unconditional love there is actually no need for forgiveness, just a little weeding.