Grudges, Part V: Seeing Through

Image from here, text added

My husband used to be the principal of a boarding high school in Hawaii. He once told me of walking across campus in the afternoon and seeing a female student sitting in the doorway of the gym, which had all its doors ajar to the mild breezes outside. As he glanced at the student, she suddenly caught his attention, he said, and it was like he could see right through her exterior and into her soul. I've heard that anecdote from my husband several times over the years, and have found that when I try, I too can look past the exterior of a person and catch a glimpse of their soul.

Parenthetically: My theology is not one that believes the soul can be separated from the body. When one lives, the other lives; and one dies, the other dies. But I do believe that there is an inner spark which God puts there and which grows with life and human development: the character and personality of a person. The inner spark is something we know and love, and that is what I refer to as "soul." We can love it because we are made in the image of God, who is Love. Sidebar over.

A teenage artist named Shea did an art experiment a few years ago that has caught fire: the "You're Beautiful" experiment. She set up a camera and posed people in front of it, and then told them, "I'm taking pictures of things I find beautiful." The video and the stills are both striking. Her assessment of people as "beautiful" actually makes them so. It's like a window opens and you can see their souls, lovely, vulnerable and intensely personal. The copycat video experiments posted to YouTube are just as striking and touching.

Why do I talk about seeing a soul? Because for me that has been the only way to lay down a grudge. Somewhere behind the facade of that person who has caused me pain, is a soul. I don't always get the story of the person, but I have gathered bits and pieces often enough to know that inside a person who offends, is someone whose soul has been deeply scarred and shaped by events that have enabled them to turn and hurt others. Maybe it's my imagination, but those who have been the most hurtful to me seem to have been making it from one day to the next with either very warped and twisted souls, or very callused souls. Either way, twists or calluses are both caused by trauma.

Does that devalue the importance of my hurt at their hands? Not at all.

My dad taught me in my teenage years, until I could repeat it perfectly, to say to myself, "Never allow yourself to believe that anyone is deliberately trying to hurt you." Saying this has been a way to open my own eyes to what is happening in the other person's soul. They may actually be trying to hurt me, in fact. It's a human reaction to strike back when struck. Or to lash out as a way of self-protection, much as I yelled at two threatening dogs that accosted me on my walk in the wee hours of this morning. Both of those, however, are reactions that arise from fear, and fear comes from prior hurt.

So here's my own struggle with grudge-holding: I spent eleven long years working in an institution where a teacher publicly and privately lashed out at me, accused me, denigrated me, and questioned my efficacy and fit for my job ... any time he had an opportunity. To complicate matters, he had once been my schoolmate. When such a person possesses talent, high intelligence, cleverness ...and tenure, there's not a whole lot you can do. Frankly, I deliberately chose to do nothing reactive, hard as that was for me, solely because of my desire to be like Jesus. But I didn't walk away without baggage. I have fought over and over with the grudge that rises up and tries to lay eggs in my nest as I remember the accumulated memories of those eleven years and how beaten down I felt.

Yet I always come back to this man's soul, and when I do, the questions arise: What makes a person so vicious? Why did he have such deep-rooted convictions that I was out to make his life miserable, and thus he must strike back over and over? How deeply must he have been hurt at some earlier time of life! What kinds of hurts would make him so awful to me and to other authority figures in his life? How did he arrive at the conclusions that an organization works on an economy of doing favors and trading in on emotional debts owed? What kind of family system taught him to say such insidious, mean-hearted things with such calm and iciness?

While I was living with the situation I looked through to this man's soul with as much objectivity as I could muster, and saw it to be poisonous and grimy on the side he showed to some of us, yet bright and winsome and funny to others. Jekyll and Hyde, callus and vulnerability, brilliance and evil, scarred and bleeding on one side but brandishing a dagger on the other side with blood from the backs of others dripping off of it. Such a mix of darkness and light. Yet somewhere deep at his core, I realized, was a child who was hurt and still weeping. I wish I could say I saw this on my own, but I believe it was insight coming as an answer to heartfelt prayer.

That kind of effort, "seeing through" until you gather the picture of someone's soul, makes it impossible to hold onto a grudge. Seeing a soul forces me to lay down my anger, at least for a while if not forever. It may not be your solution to letting go, but it's the one thing that works for me. 

Really look at the offender. Be willing to see him or her with supernatural eyes and perceive something beyond flesh and bone and hatefulness.

This brings me to the endpoint, thus far, of my reflections on grudge-holding. I continue to ponder the ways in which grudge-holding ties us down, walls us off, and limits our joy in life. Grudge-holding breaks friendships and sours marriages, shadows the workplace and shackles organizations, starts internal wars and produces interpersonal strife. I think that laying a grudge down is bigger than just forgiving. It's more than acknowledging the hurt but choosing not to suffer. It's more than letting it go simply for your own health and well-being. It's a willingness to see through, to see beyond, to see beauty and vulnerability somewhere in the offender and to choose to protect that little bit of God's image in the person. And oh boy, is that ever a tough job!

Interested in your thoughts.

Grudges, Part IV: Choosing to not suffer

Photo from here

Two descriptors that I think characterize the nature of grudge holding ("a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury") are suffering, and narrowed vision. Let me take those two characteristics one by one.

The whole focus of a grudge is that you have been hurt, and you deliberately nurse that hurt. Think of the meaning of the word "nurse." A nursing baby draws life-giving nourishment from its mother. Similarly, a grudge draws in its nourishment because the person holding it is cradling it, feeding it, growing it by supplying it with their own life forces. Nursing a grudge means making that past insult or injury a part of yourself, making it an extension of you. 

But why do that? After all, the rehearsal of a past insult or injury only serves to extend it. If it's a small offense, it grows bigger. If it was a brief hurt, it only lengthens.

My husband and I walk and talk together several times a week, and he said something a week or so ago that startled me: "We all get hurt by others, but it is our choice whether or not to suffer."

We all get hurt by others, but it is our choice whether or not to suffer.

When we let go of harm that has done to us by someone else, we choose to not be harmed over and over and over again by that person. Every. Single. Time. We. Remember. We refuse to let them make us suffer. We move on, choose a different life. Instead of nursing a grudge and being repeatedly reinjured as we rehearse it, you and I have the power to chose freedom from that original injury done. Easier said than done, I know, but we DO have the choice.

###

I was in Denver yesterday for a university alumni gathering, and I noticed and reveled in the big sky there. When you stand outside on the prairie with big huge fluffy clouds scudding across the blue, blue expanse of the heavens, it's a feeling all its own. Your heart grows bigger. You know in your bones your own little-but-free place in this universe. And yet anything is possible. 

That's how it feels to let go of a grudge. There's something about rehearsing a perceived injury that feels like dark, foreboding mountains closing in on all sides. Your inner gaze narrows, focuses on every tiny feature of that injury that you felt so keenly, and in that hyperfocus your vision is blocked from seeing other possibilities, from seeing the goodness of the great big universe around you that can diminish and even erase the size of that hurt that seemed so big.

Get rid of the closeup focus! Let the mountains flatten out and the sky become big and blue overhead, and let things take their rightful perspective for a wide-open life of freedom. Your freedom. You may have been injured, but you can choose not to suffer.

(to be continued)

Grudges, Part III: The research

In the previous post I reviewed the five instances or stories in which the Bible writers highlight the negative outcomes of grudge-holding. In this post I'd like to look at current research.

Psychology has recently turned its attention to some of the "softer inquiries" that researchers used to scorn: happiness, forgiveness, even spirituality (gasp!). Grudges fit right in with those newer areas of intellectual curiosity. Considering the damage done by grudge-holding, it's no surprise that there's a specific line of inquiry into the effects of hanging on to a grudge. It's related to the Forgiveness research, but I think it carves out its own little niche.

Researchers in Singapore conducted a fascinating study in which they asked people to recall a situation for which they still held a grudge against their offender. Then they were asked to estimate the angle of slopes depicted in various photographs. (The idea was to bring to mind the task of climbing a steep hill.) The people who had not let go of grudges estimated the slopes to be steeper than those who had let go of grudges. Researchers described it as similar to wearing "emotional backpacks," like real backpacks that make an upward trail seem steeper in real life. And the researchers went further in their exploration: despite controlling for other factors such as fitness, they found that people who thought about their grudges could not jump as high as those who had forgiven their offenders. The Singapore researchers concluded that holding a grudge is actually physically taxing to a person, limiting their abilities.

Medical researchers have also found indications of the chemical effects of grudge-holding. Recent findings are well represented in a 2012 study by McCulloch and Tabak which indicates that holding a grudge increases the production of the stress hormone cortisol, and inhibits the production of oxytocin, the "love hormone." Well, of course. But those hormones also affect our health. Too much cortisol has a negative effect on a person's weight, causes inflammation, depresses the immune function and raises the risk of chronic disease. Additionally, grudge-holding has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, pain disorders and stomach ulcers.

Somewhere in the past year I spotted a study reported somewhere, saying that people who held grudges were more likely to experience dementia in old age, but I can't find that study now. Nevertheless, that concept intrigues me greatly. Could choosing to forgive and let go improve your chances for preserving mental functions? Well, let's follow the logic. If holding grudges raises cortisol, and and higher cortisol levels are related to weight problems and cardiovascular disease, and those are both correlated with an increased risk of dementia, it seems to all connect. But short of finding a direct link in the research, I can't reference a study in which a connection between grudge-holding and dementia has been indicated...yet.

The point is, holding a grudge is not only destructive in human relationships. Holding a grudge is not only seen by Bible writers as a dynamic that leads to no good whatsoever. It's also clearly indicated in scientific research as having a significant negative effect on both your physical and mental health.

(to be continued)

Grudges, Part II: The Biblical Stuff

In recent years I have been struck by how many people around me hold grudges, and by how much damage is done by that death-grip on a sense of offense. So I've been learning what I can about grudge-holding, and have become ever more intrigued by what I've discovered so far.

I often go to the Bible, which is a touchstone for me in understanding human beings and how they work. I was interested to find that the Bible mentions grudges five times, and in none of those places is a grudge a good thing. You'll have to be biblically literate to follow my brief summary of these stories, but if you're not, I suggest you get acquainted with them. Bible stories are alluded to all the time in society, they provide the seed narratives for movies and books, and they have shaped western culture, so it seems wise for people to be acquainted with them.

The first biblical mention of grudge-holding takes place in Genesis 27 just after Jacob steals his brother Esau's birthright blessing. The brothers' father, Isaac, is old, blind and infirm, so although the twins are as different as night and day, Jacob is able to dupe his father into thinking he is the older twin, and gets his father to bestow his patriarchal blessing on the "wrong" son. Esau comes in to receive his blessing and finds that the words have already been said over his brother. Culturally, the deed is done.

The bible says (Gen. 27:41): So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him; and Esau said to himself, "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob."

Clearly Esau's grudge not only led him to plot his brother's death, but it also revealed a cold-hearted calculation in estimating the time to his father's death so that he could exact revenge on his twin.

***

The second biblical mention of grudge-holding is in connection with the sons of Jacob, just one generation later. The brothers of Joseph, the next-to-youngest son of Jacob, pulled a dirty trick by selling Joseph into slavery. Problem was, he turned up again as the powerful second-in-command of Egypt, and first-in-command of the food they needed to buy from Egypt during a terrible drought. Joseph took the high road, forgiving his brothers and resettling his whole family nearby so that he could make sure they were provided for.

But memories are long, and shame runs deep. When his father died, the brothers were worried.

When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph bears a grudge against us and pays back in full for all the wrong which we did to him!" (Gen. 50:15)

Joseph didn't.

***

Grudges show up again later, in the "sundry laws" (I love that term--a mishmash of guidance to pay attention to) that God gave Moses to guide the lives of the children of Israel. Here is the instruction from Leviticus 19:17-18:

You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor; but shall not incur sin because of him.  You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

Seems pretty clear to me.

***

Now we come to David, the second king of Israel. This man spent much of his youth hiding out in the mountains from the first king, Saul, who was out to kill him. Later he fled from his own son Absalom, who had designs on the throne and would have killed his own father to get it. 

David was a lyricist, and we see much of what he was trying to work through emotionally, in the songs that he wrote. In Psalm 55:1-3 we get a window into his fear of Saul:

Give ear to my prayer, O God,

And do not hide yourself from my supplication.

Give heed to me and answer me;

I am restless in my complaint and surely distracted

Because of the voice of the enemy,

Because of the pressure of the wicked;

For they bring down trouble upon me

And in anger they bear a grudge against me.

It's no fun to be on the receiving end of a grudge, and David has not been the last to call on God for help in such a situation.

***

The final mention of a grudge in the Bible drives a famous story: the beheading of John the Baptist. This wild prophet from the wilderness had called out king Herod for stealing his brother's wife. Herod was interested in what this prophet had to say, but his wife Herodias was deeply offended.

Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death and could not do so; for Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. And when he heard him, he was very perplexed; but he used to enjoy listening to him. (Mark 6:19-20)

It did not end well for John. It often does not end well when someone in power holds a grudge against you.

(to be continued)

Best Vacation Ever

The Comeback Bloggers are writing this week on the topic of our best vacation ever. Well, that's a cinch! My favorite (and most life-changing) vacation took place in March of 2012. Oddly enough, for someone like me who tends to run extraverted, I went on this one by myself.

At the time I was strong in body but battered and worn out in spirit. The somewhat dysfunctional dynamics of administration [as a woman] in the particular institutional culture where I worked had crushed me for some years, and I sorely needed restoration. I'd been asked to speak for a sister university's graduation in Thailand, the land of my birth and of my dual citizenship for my first 11 years. I was looking forward to returning to a country I love, and decided to work in a few days of retreat time. 

I diligently searched the internet for an island off the coast of Thailand that would be as close as possible to Phuket, the island of my earliest memories in the 1960's. Someplace with simple people, 2-lane roads, slow life and good beaches. And I found it.

March of 2012 found me taking a half-day van ride from Bangkok, then a 2-hour boat ride to Koh Kood, the closest Thai island to Cambodia. The boat dropped me off at the Shantaa resort's pier, and I settled into my "sweet," a finely built cabin with an enclosed outdoor shower and doors that folded back onto a glorious view through the coconut trees to the bay.

My days at Shantaa were filled with reading (Henri Nouwen and a couple of other good books), journaling, walking, praying, and sleeping. Internet was available up at the open-air restaurant, so I could keep in touch with my husband but wasn't overdoing my online time. I sat in the white canvas beanbags on the cabin's deck and listened to the wind in the coconut palm fronds and the monsoon rains that are so healing. I walked down the beach barefoot as far as I could go, listening to the soothing sound of waves that was never far away from home as I was growing up.

It was during my trip to Koh Kood that I knew in my heart, having heard an almost-voice, that it was time to go, to leave the senior position I'd held at the university for the past 10 years. It was also during my time there that I saw an older tourist die on a snorkel day trip--probably from a heart attack and subsequent drowning--and decided that I needed to re-key my life to the question, "If I died today, would I be satisfied that I was doing what I'm doing now?" The answer at that time was, "No." Today it would be "yes." These are life-changing moments.

I came home restored, refocused, and looking forward to what would happen next, even if it would not be easy. Thailand has always had a place in my heart. But a corner of that Thai territory is exclusively dedicated to Shantaa--pictures, sounds and commitments to return to from time to time, and reorient myself yet again.

Grudges, Part I: The story

Bob was a handsome religion major who played the guitar. Nellie was an outgoing nursing student who sang beautifully and gave decent haircuts to her friends. They'd both been hired to work at the same summer camp, when she took a shine to him. Nellie prayed about it, watched for indications that her feelings were returned, and thought she spotted signs of Bob's interest in her. She'd already signed up to spend a the next school year working at a Christian school in the Pacific Islands, but that didn't deter her with Bob. Nellie had read books about true love discovered through letter-writing, and it seemed terribly romantic to correspond across the miles. She'd it all worked out, day-dreamed about how it might go, and wasn't concerned about the dampening effect of an ocean between them in the next year.

Nellie's girlfriends, of course, knew about her crush on Bob. Several of them were praying for Nellie, hoping to watch her dreams come true, and were checking in with her regularly. "How's it going?" they'd ask, and Nellie would relate the latest interaction with Bob, down to the nuances of his indications of interest. He had a way of looking at Nellie with a twinkle in his eye and a million-dollar smile. Hooh boy! It was like she could think of nothing else in that moment.

Summer camp dynamics being what they are, the college students became a close-knit group as they worked, prayed and played together throughout that summer. Nellie got to cross paths with Bob many times a day. He got Nellie to do his haircuts during the summer, and they made music together. Nellie invited Bob to go berry picking with her and several of her friends on her day off, and that was fun, too. They sang together for programs in the evenings.

And as the summer ended, Bob asked for one more haircut before camp was over and they went their separate ways. 

"Now's the time," Nellie thought. "He's going to say something about liking me, and about keeping in touch while I'm in the islands." But as she set up the chair on the sidewalk of the camp administration building and pulled out her hair-cutting scissors, other camp workers started gathering around to watch the haircut. There was no opportunity for a heart-to-heart. Then, suddenly, the summer was over and Nellie found herself at home packing for year overseas.

Nellie's first two weeks on the island, she cried daily from homesickness. And she cried several times more over the rest of the first month. There was only one other American working in the island school, a girl who had come from another college across the country. Nellie was culture shocked and lonely. It felt like she had fallen into a hole. Whenever the mail plane flew in she hung around the mailboxes to pick up her letters from home. But there was never anything from Bob, not even a note on the aerogrammes that the missions office sent, full of notes from her college friends. Not a word.

One day, about two months in, Nellie's sister called her long distance. "I think maybe you should hear this from me rather than some other way," she said. "Bob is dating Amy." 

It was like a punch in Nellie's gut. Amy had dropped in to chat with Nellie during the spring term at college, and then all through the summer, asking how it was going with Bob and saying she was praying for them. Just a few years younger than Nellie, Amy was a sweet, earnest-faced friend. Except not so sweet, apparently. Nellie realized Amy's interest had been for herself. As Nellie's sister told the story, Nellie concluded that Amy had moved right in on Bob the minute she was out of the picture. She felt deeply betrayed. She felt angry. Bitterness quickly set in. By the time Nellie returned to the United States the next summer, Bob and Amy were engaged to be married at Christmas.

Nellie returned to college the following fall term nursing a bucketload of anger and some dread. Bob and Amy couldn't miss observing the fact that Nellie had built up a simmering grudge of epic proportions. She avoided them on the sidewalks and in the halls at college. Her roommate--whose fiancé was a classmate of Bob's--got an earful of bitterness in Nellie's tale about how Amy had solicited her trust and invited her to open up about her hopes, and then turned around and used that to her advantage. This was the issue, Nellie told her new roommate: not that Amy had won his heart, but that she had taken advantage of Nellie's confidence as she built her hopes for her own love story with Bob.

After graduation Nellie moved to another city for graduate school, and--oh, horrors--it just so happened that Bob and Amy lived in that area and attended her church. Nellie would cross paths with them at church. The grudge still sat cold and hard in her stomach, and her greeting to them was chilly, barely civil. There was not enough room in the church for all three of them, Nellie concluded.

***

The Oxford Dictionary defines a grudge as "a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury." The Oxford gurus should have added, "which divides people unnecessarily for long periods of time, hurts the one who cherishes it, and helps accomplish nothing."

(to be continued)