I am now able

to help someone else --

   listen to her stories

   tell her that I love her

   promise it will get better

   and say how brave she is

   and strong!

I can say I understand

and share her anger,

and sometimes gently touch

her frightened face

and say it is all right.

I can tell her she is beautiful

even when she feels debased.

And now and then

she lets me hold her,

lets me share her deepest pain

the loneliness of her mistrust.

I am healed enough

to help someone else

and find that all my pain

has geater meainging.

In sharing love

my trauma is redeemed.

Driving down the street on a spring afternoon

I saw an old man on the sidewalk,

Bent posture and wavering walk.

Well-dressed, he steadied himself on his car

and cautiously began to step toward the street.

He was too old to drive, I thought,

a plucky fellow, perhaps eighty years.

I felt sorry for him.

As my car approached and he turned to

walk to the door of his,

I realized he was no stranger --

he was father.

Tears!

Stinging tears.

We hadn't spoken for three years.

My deep desire to stop, to say hello

and my rage of hate and anger

ran together across my eyes and cheeks.

I speeded up my car, pulled down the sunshade

and watched from the sideview mirror

as he entered his car.

An old man, powerless though only sixty-five

he seemed eighty.

Beat my hands into the couch!

Cry aloud

that life has given me such confusion

love and pity mixed with hate and fear.

No simple answer and no return -- no way out.

He can no longer hurt me

yet the burden of the load of

painful memories and unresolved confusion

destroys the beauty of a spring afternoon

and my compassion for an old man.

There are those who expect me to forgive

to let charitable kindness and reason

wash over me

   like a rushing stream

   over jagged rocks --

to forgive

now.

Seventy times seven --

the command may mean more

than first appears

Not that one says "I forgive"

over and over and over

nor that to will it

   makes it so,

but that one forgives

   as one loves --

gradually.

Forgiveness is a process

that begins with knowledge

   understanding

   believing in change.

I feel little charity now.

I can hope

   it may happen

   as I come to understand

   myself and you.

Seventy experiences and understandings

   times seven or seventy more.

I can believe I will forgive

   someday -- then.