“It is here and nowhere else that suffering and salvation occur.” Grace Jantzen
I’m attempting to read Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming for the third time. The first paragraph is just three sentences and reads: “The undertow has gripped the wave. The salt washes the wound. We begin again, or not at all.”
Though I’ve yet to make it past page seven, this idea that we begin again or not at all has been with me since our first encounter. It’s a reminder of chaotic origins, rolling ancestry, and an assertion that there’s no such thing as pure beginning. This matters to me because I’ve been doing a lot of work on shame, and noticing the tendency to keep secrets from myself and then, others. There’s a fear of the past there, and of past mistakes. And this particular kind of fear makes it really hard to learn.
On page two, Keller quotes philosopher F.W.J. Schelling who wrote that “most people turn away from what is concealed within themselves just as they turn away from the depths of the great life…shy away from the glance into the abysses of the past, which are still in one just as much as the present.1”
One of the reasons I’m so committed to reading this book is because it feels so relevant to shame work. Keller’s work to undermine the notion of pure beginnings feels related to shame’s all-or-nothing logic; that something is either pure and good, or irrevocably spoiled. Shame is uncreative; it can make it seem as if there’s no other way to engage a past transgression than to build a life around the need to pretend like it never happened. Shame also leaves little room for the possibility that what’s wrong can be made right.
And it remains to be seen whether I’m understanding what Keller meant when she said that “we begin again, or not at all,” but so far what I’m taking it to mean is that each moment is a chance to engage with the past in a way that is brave.
When it comes to past harms in particular, I’ve often struggled with a sense that there’s no going back. I imagine it has something to do with the cultural imperative to “move on” and “let go,” or to simply “forgive and forget” without real reckoning or struggle. I’ve expected others to forgive and forget without making a real effort to grapple with how my behavior has hurt them. I’ve expected myself to forgive and forget without the honest participation of those who’ve hurt me, as well.
I’ve lacked imagination when it comes to the many possibilities available for relating to mistakes. I’ve overlooked the potential in every moment to seek what might constitute a move toward setting things right, and to attempt it. Not assuming that “the right thing” will be static or preset but taking the risk of asking—with openness and earnest—what the right thing might be for those involved.
This week in the International Court of Justice, South Africa argued that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. The BBC, which is “the largest broadcast news operation in the world” according to their website, chose not to broadcast South Africa’s prosecution but did broadcast Israel’s defense the following day. On January 10th, the South African High Commissioner to Canada Moe Shaik issued a statement about the case, which included the following:
“Each country must find in their own understanding of what it means to be ‘human’ and determine for themselves their contribution to our ‘shared humanity’…
We, as South Africans, have made our choice. We have walked to that field of human understanding with our fearful but resolute courage in a manner consistent with our consciousness that rallies behind the clarion call of the convention to prevent genocide.
We do so urgently. We ask forgiveness for not acting sooner. Give peace a chance.”
There’s so much I love about this statement, and I’m going to come back to it shortly.
The fourth step in twelve step recovery programs is to take “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of oneself. It is a powerful invitation because it involves a willingness to start where one is, and to be unflinchingly honest about the past; mistakes, failures, and the ways in which one has done harm to others whether that harm was intentional or not.