Embodied Forgiveness

Walking with a Liberated Gait

Guest writer: Rev. Jordan T. Jones, Associate Pastor of Metro Hope Church.

Ever since I attended a Rosh Hashanah service with a dear Jewish friend of mine, I have greatly appreciated the Jewish High Holy Days’ emphasis on reflection and repentance. Imagine if we lived in a society where we actually stopped our labor, saw that the world does not depend on us for it to keep spinning, and began to reflect on our lives—where we have been, who we have lost, where our bodies actually are, and what they feel like.

First, taking inventory allows your mind to catch up with your physical body. Whether you’re a person in exile from a tyrannical king or bombarded by images of violence on social media, the physical body might be processing something that happened three years ago while the mind has already filed it away to worry about the next two weeks. We are constantly out of sync with our emotions, our feelings, and especially our own bodies. In a Cartesian culture that privileges thought over feeling, we often forget that our bodies are a site of knowing.

Another reason for taking stock of our lives is to collectively ask: Is this what we want to be doing? Is this how we want to live? Are we going about all of this the right way?

A collective pause allows us to reassess one) if the train is truly barreling down a track that leads off of a cliff into shark-infested waters; and two) if there are some alternatives then charging straight ahead and hoping for the best.

The culmination of Rosh Hashanah is Yom Kippur, a day of repentance. And this is the most solemn of the Holy Days because it is a day that in addition to fasting, involves reaching out to people that you have wronged. It involves settling debts and asking for forgiveness.

All religious concepts can be weaponized and forgiveness is no different. In many Christian contexts, forgiveness is often used to excuse one’s abuse of another. It has also been co-opted by the state to signal that the criminal court can somehow expedite the process of forgiveness through acts of psychological, physical, and spiritual violence.

For that reason, I was apprehensive about sharing about forgiveness during a spiritual reflection at Exodus Transitional Community, an organization that provides services for people impacted by the justice system. The best bet though, when sharing with people who have vastly different lived experiences is to yield your time and allow those experiences to fill the room. And so I asked the following question and stepped back: “What role has forgiveness played in your life as someone who has either been forgiven or has forgiven?”

The responses were overwhelming, powerful, and oddly enough, embodied. Each participant that shared spoke to how forgiving or being forgiven released something not only psychically but physically. One participant shared how prior to forgiving the people who had wronged them, they experienced sleepless nights and physical discomfort, even illness! Someone else talked about how his unwillingness to let things go interfered with his digestive system. One sister shared how even though she felt betrayed by one of her closest family members, she decided to forgive her so she could be free to smile and not be worn down by bitterness. Finally, someone shared about how forgiving himself gave him both immediate and gradual shifts in his physical disposition. In other words, the brother was moving differently!

In each case, forgiveness was not some existential, mystical transaction, nor was it bound to the singular act of repentance. Rather, it permeated into their very bodies and affected how they moved in the world. This brought up a flurry questions for me:

• How would we move differently if we truly believed that we were worthy of forgiveness or capable of forgiving?

• How would our world be changed if we moved like we truly believed in the power of forgiveness?

• How would a forgiveness mindset change our responses to our own shortcomings and those of others?

• Where in our bodies would we begin to feel liberated if we practiced forgiveness?

I’m always blown by the wisdom and generosity from the folks at Exodus but this morning in particular, it wasn’t only my perspective that was changed— I began moving a little differently

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