More on forgiveness and the perfect Lent book

Forgiveness has been a theme of the weekend. A very interesting conversation in Leicester Square on Friday afternoon.
And then the end of The Railway Man - which is very hard to read without tears. Eric Lomax forgave his torturers. I cannot believe it. But it took him time. He also said that he could never forget.
B. on Friday afternoon said that forgiveness isn't as easy as all that. It involves talking to the person involved and understanding - really understanding, not just making a token, emotional gesture. (Forgiveness is something we should aspire to. Of course. For some of us, it's the most difficult thing.)

Prisoner at Changi POW camp, Singapore

In the final pages of The Railway Man Lomax writes about forgiving someone involved in his torture in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Singapore for making a crude radio.
It is the most appropriate read for Lent that I can imagine. He forgives a man who was involved in torture aimed  at breaking him to the point of death: torture so vile that 50 years on the torturer is still physically affected by the memory.
Lomax  is - almost miraculously - able to meet the man (called Ngase) and come to terms with what happened. It is - as my friend B said on Friday afternoon - a progression. It takes time - from the moment that he realised he had found his tormentor to feelings of rage and hatred - then a maelstrom of thoughts of what to do. Revenge, or a meeting? He finally travelled to Singapore to meet Ngase and talk to him.

"He looked up at me; he was trembling, in tears, saying over and over 'I am very, very sorry...'

They returned to the place they first met - the camp now built over with new housing. They visited war memorials.  Then they flew to Osaka to visit Ngase's home.
Then Lomax so touchingly - forever mindful of procedure - decided that some kind of formal gesture of forgiveness was needed and visited him for a final time in Tokyo, in his hotel room: 'I had decided to give him a piece of paper which I thought would meet both our needs...'

"I read my short letter out to him, stopping and checking that he understood each paragraph. I felt he deserved this careful formality. In the letter I said that the war had been over for almost fifty years; that I had suffered much; and that I knew that although he too had suffered throughout this time, he had been most courageous and brave in arguing against militarism and working for reconciliation. I told him that while I could not forget what happened in Kanbury in 1943, I assured him of my total forgiveness.
He was overcome with emotion again, and we spent some time in his room talking quietly and without haste."

Just how Lomax summoned such humanity - I don't know.Reading of it touches me to the core, though.

Commonplace books and a Leicester Square epiphany

Came - by complete chance - across the term Commonplace book and am intrigued. Traditionally these are books for recording concepts, facts and formulae. They are not diaries or travelogues but something else. Just love this idea: a scrapbook for thoughts and ideas. E.M. Forster's Commonplace Book (or one of his commonplace books, perhaps) has been published.
It reminds me: I used to keep notebooks, when I had more time. In the front I kept notes, clippings and postcards; stuff about work - in the back. I tried to make sure that the front part was fuller. How sad to have stopped.

 

Love St James's Piccadilly's mantra for Easter (on its website): Create in me a clean heart, O Lord.
Cleansing the heart: very hard.

A Friday afternoon conversation at Cafe Rouge, Leicester Square, with a colleague who is a Catholic Brother. We're talking about a group of volunteers at work and the dynamic within the group. There is a problem as one woman feels excluded from the main clique. We don't understand why, and those in the main clique say 'What's the problem?'

B.:  'They don't realise, you see, because they're part of the group. They don't see the exclusion clearly.  I remember ... as a chaplain in a school ... there were dinner ladies and a new one started and there were terrible problems, they didn't include her. So I had a word with them all, gathered the old guard together and asked about it.  And one said 'Well, I don't know why she thinks that, I've said nowt to her."'

Changing the subject: Easter approaches. I say that I haven't been back to church since last Easter when I had an argument at a quiet Pascal reflection about Judas.  I said I just couldn't forgive Judas. Someone was trying to make a comparison with Oscar Pistorius (that still seems absurd to me) -  on the lines that we must not judge without knowing the facts. We do not know what drove Judas to this, she said. I said: well, no, but he took money, he betrayed it was a crime. I can't forgive that.

B. is quiet. We settle the bill. He insists on paying.
He says 'You know, when I was working in Cambodia I saved up enough to put the son of one of the families in the community through college for a year. He was really pleased. It took me a long time to save up the money. Then I found, after a few months, that he hadn't gone to college. He'd used the money to pay for food and school for his brothers and sisters. I was not pleased, I can tell you.
Then I thought....'

We emerge into the sleazy light of Leicester Square. People are queuing at the ticket booth. There is fat on the pavement from an infinity of take away pizzas and greasy sandwiches. The sky is grey. It is a raw April evening.

'And you know,' he continues, 'then I thought ... when my time's up and I'm at the Pearly Gates and the big question comes - and .... what have you done with your life? I thought, well, the key question will be 'How much have you loved?'

He smiles.
It is a bit of an epiphany.