On Being Brave

You have been as brave as anybody I’ve known, and it is comforting to think about it. You probably don’t think of yourself as brave because nobody who really has courage does.

Marlon Brando, Letter to Tennessee Williams

During tough times we often forget that courage does not necessarily require dramatic acts that make the headlines. Sometimes it is a series of small, insignificant right steps. Be brave, one small step at a time!!!

Yikes!

The Big Book of AA says, “The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Unless one’s family expresses a desire to live upon spiritual principles we think we ought not to urge them. We should not talk incessantly to them about spiritual matters. They will change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words. We must remember that ten or twenty years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone.”

Not all amends go well. Here is an example of an amends gone bad:

“ ‘Joey, I know I treated you and your sisters badly when you were kids,’ he began. “One of the things I’ve learned through Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have to admit that you’ve hurt people and let them know how sorry you are. I know that I did some bad things back then, and I apologize. Son, I’m sorry for anything I may have done to harm you.’ Then he stuck out his hand. I did not have it in me to forgive him, as absolution was not my line of trade, but I shook his hand anyway, if only because this creepy vignette made me uncomfortable and I wanted it to be over. Clemency was not included in my limited roster of emotions, but because he seemed to be making an effort to turn his life around, I did not express my true feelings at the time. Still, the whole thing rankled. I didn’t like the way my father phrased his apology; it sounded like he was working from a script. I knew, of course, that the self-abnegation-by-numbers routine was a stunt suggested to people like my father by Alcoholics Anonymous. You have done many bad things and now realized that you were powerless before the fearsome suzerainty of demon alcohol, but you were man enough to fess up to your mistakes. You said a few words, you stuck out your hand - meekly, if you were any good at this sort of thing - your apology was accepted, and then everything was even-steven….Nothing my father had done in all the years I’d known him infuriated me more than this fleabag apology.”

Joe Queenan, Closing Time

What went wrong? What principles did Joey’s dad violate? How can we learn from this experience?

Maybe...

People don’t like it when you change. Even if that change is making your life better, they don’t like it because a little piece of them dies.

Ricky Gervais

I suppose Gervais could be right. But I see it a bit differently. Change is hard to recognize; it takes time to trust it.

If you have amends to make, do them as best you can whether people like it or not. But do so with the utmost respect for the difficulty they may face in hearing it.

It is hard and we are ill-equipped to deal with past harms that wrecked us. Be gentle and gracious to all.

When Direct Amends is Impossible or Ill-Advised

What do we do in situations where the direct amends are either impossible (death, don’t know how to contact them, you are reasonably sure your contact would be unwanted) or unwise? We make a living amend.

I know a guy who sexually assaulted a woman during a drunken party in a fraternity house. Years later, he has gotten sober and this story and his bad acts haunt him. He does not know the girl’s name and contact is impossible. He has chosen to make his amends by making financial restitution for her suffering by giving generously every month to a local organization that specializes in supporting women who have been sexually abused.

Another gal I know has been ordered by the court to have no contact with her children. Her parental rights are terminated. Sober and financially successful, she went to an attorney and figured out a way to set up a college fund for each of her children. This fund will be made available at the appropriate time and the source of the funds will remain anonymous. Her weekly contribution to these funds serves as an offering of love to children she lost because of her abuse of them while she was using. As she makes the deposit each week, she prays for her children, expresses gratitude to the adoptive parents for their love and care for them. This act of restitution has become a sacred moment for her at the end of every week.

Sometimes a letter is the way to go. I have a friend who wrote an amends letter to her deceased father and traveled across the country to sit at the foot of his grave and read her letter to him.

In each of these situations, my friends received wise counsel as they wrestled with whether a direct, or indirect amends, was the way to go. In all cases, the decision was made based on the potential of harm to the offended person or others.

The World Upended

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?

John Keats, letter to George and Georgianna Keats, April 21, 1819

What might be lost if we avoid our pain and suffering?

Currently we are living under the weight of a global crisis. The coronavirus has swept in and taken possession of our land. And we watch others respond.

I saw a family respond with creativity and hope while their 80 year old father was isolated in an ICU - far from them physically, cared for and ultimately healed by the grace of God and the competency and care of his medical team. In spite of the crunch the nurses were under, they helped the family communicate. They held up the screen that allowed him to see his family send him messages of love; they taped the love letters to his wall.

And after the crisis was averted, it was his wife I loved the most. She kept making amends for what they had not known. You see, they had been in Florida and returned home to Virginia upon the advice of physicians. Symptom-free, they drove carefully up the highway and assumed they were returning to the safety of their retirement community. In the process, they exposed 288 people to the virus. And they are extremely sorry.

They did the best they could. They followed the guidelines of late February. They suffered a great trauma of their own but still found space to worry about their own wrongdoing - even though no one could blame them for what they did not know. They did not shy away from their suffering or the opportunity to serve as a cautionary tale as they confessed their own mistakes.

This is the kind of humility and willingness we need right now - and those who learn how to listen well, love large, and admit their mistakes are the kind of courageous people who will help us all not only survive, but thrive during this pandemic. Our skill sets matter.