Finding Forgiveness: A ritual of mutuality

June Boyce-Tillman, editor of the book series Music and Spirituality

This is part 2 in a series on Finding Forgiveness. 

In Part 1, I explained how we can establish an authentic interiority following traumatic experiences. Here, I will describe two examples which have enabled this process in me:

A ritual of mutuality – Liturgies of Separation

At the end of the marriage Church could offer us little help because of its theology of the sanctity of marriage vows, carefully enshrined and imposed by the weight of the Marriage Eucharist. The acknowledgement of divorce in religious terms is still a hole-in-the-corner affair. And yet, if there is a weighty liturgy at the beginning of marriage, surely there must be some sort ritual at the end? A social worker in the Conciliation Service offered us a reversal of the marriage ceremony, conducted like a presiding minister.” Hold hands; look into one another’s eyes and repeat after me”:

“Thank you for the good times we have shared together.”

“I am sorry for all the times that I have hurt you.”

“Goodbye as my husband.”

“Hello as the separated parent of our children”

And then the same process by the other partner. Some people might want me to write that, as we looked at another, we knew that our marriage was restored. But that is not what happened. After it, we sat apart in separate chairs and wept for what might have been, but could never be. I am glad of the friendship and our mutuality in caring for and protecting our children. Now we are good friends. We are separated parents and joint grandparent. As we all sat down for a celebration meal for our granddaughter winning a gold medal — our two sons, my eldest son’s divorced wife with her new partner, my ex-husband and me — the family gathering appeared to me as a miracle.

A song

My relationship with my mother was a mess. It had not been sorted while she was alive. In May 2005, I was at a conference designed to produce a book on peace-making, Rik Palieri, (Palieri 2008) a colleague of the protest singer Pete Seeger, had talked about how he had achieved reconciliation with his father, by composing a song that he sang at a family gathering. In this song he saw his father’s abuse in the context of cultural views of manhood in the US. In an open air café in Madrid, while eating paella, this song was written. My mother was dead, but I thought I might achieve a measure of resolution of our complex and troubled relationship. I situated her in the culture of womanhood in her days. In verse four there is a reference to Ibsen’s The Doll’s House and how my mother’s generation were trapped in a particular form of marriage. This meant that often all of a woman’s energy was focussed on one small group of people. The song forms part of my one-woman performance Juggling: A question of identity, where it is sung as a letter to her, and has moved many others wherever it is used.

The author with her mother:

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

The song was an important part in mulching down the difficult parts of my childhood. However, now these provide compost for the creativity which has characterised my life as a hymn and song writer, a composer, conductor, teacher and priest.

[1] @Stainer and Bell