Forgiveness

  

 

I did not choose to watch the memorial service for Charlie Kirk because I did not want to be reminded of the murder of that young man.  Even though I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before the day he was shot by a sniper, the shooting filled me with such horror and revulsion that I could not bear to follow the story. 

However, I did hear that Erika Kirk appeared at the memorial service and forgave her husband’s killer before a crowd of 100,000 and a national television audience. It was a magnanimous gesture on her part but one that led me to contemplate the nature of forgiveness.

Charlie and Erika Kirk are Christians and I’m sure that in her grief she was following the words of Jesus to forgive your enemies. But over two millennia Christianity has developed a way of dealing with forgiveness that is still relevant today.

I learned it in grade school at St. Mary Help of Christians in New York city. It had to do with the now almost forgotten sacrament of Penance. As children we learned that three things were required for our sins or wrongdoings to be forgiven.

First, we had to be sincerely sorry for what we had done before we could even ask for forgiveness. Second, we had to resolve to not do it again. We had to have, what was called then, a firm purpose of amendment. Only then, could we be forgiven.

Even after we were forgiven, there was one final step. We had to do penance or repair the damage that we had done. I know that as children, the penance was trivial just as our childhood sins were trivial. The priest in confession would usually just ask us to say some prayers, usually five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.

Now in my old age I realize that this simple formula can work whether you are Catholic or not. The teaching of the nuns contained a universal truth. In order to gain forgiveness when we offend or hurt someone, we must begin by saying that we are truly sorry for what we have done and promise that we will try to avoid doing it again. Then, the offended party can offer forgiveness, but even after we have been forgiven, we still must repair the damage we have done.

Here's an example from childhood. You break a neighbor’s window. You say you’re sorry and promise you will try not to do it again. He forgives you, but you still must find a way to repair the damage you have done. You must pay a penalty or do what used to be called penance. 

There is no sign as yet that Charlie Kirk’s murderer has shown any sign of sorrow or repentance for what he has done. So far, there seems to be no “firm purpose of amendment,” no sign that he would not do it again if given the opportunity. There is no sign that he would not kill Erika or her children. Nevertheless, her faith is so strong that she offers forgiveness.

Even if he is forgiven, what can the killer possibly do by way of penance? What can he do to repair the damage he has done to Charlie, Erika, their children, and their families? How will he ever repair the damage he has done to his own family? It is so sad. Even if he is given the death penalty, how can that come close to repairing the damage?

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History Lesson

 Edward Hutton's book on Lombardy, published in 1912, was the first of his Italian guides that I ever read. My Aunt Nan gave it to me on the death of her husband, Joseph Foppiani, over 30 years ago. His mother must have given it to him when he was young with this inscription, "Joseph, know thy country." Hutton, an Englishman who spent most of his life in Italy, was a student of Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance history. He began his tour of Lombardy with a discussion of the early history of Cisalpine Gaul, the name of the region during Roman times.

 

When I think of Lombardy, there comes back into my mind a country wide and gracious, watered by many a great river, and lying, a little vaguely, between always far-away mountains, a world that is all a garden, where one passes between fair hedgerows, from orchard to orchard, among the vines, where the fields are green with promise or shining with harvest, and there are meadows on the lower slopes of the mountains. And the whole of this wide garden seems to me, as is no other country in the world, to be subject to the sun, the stars and the great and beautiful clouds of an infinite sky; every landscape is filled with them, and beneath them the cities seem but small things, not cities truly, but rather sanctuaries, hidden in that garden for our delight, reverence and meditation, at the end of the endless ways, where only the restless poplars tell the ceaseless hours.

 

It is my purpose in this book to consider the nature and the history of this country, to recapture and to express as well as I may my delight in it, so that something of its beauty and its genius may perhaps disengage itself from my pages, and the reader feel what I have felt about it though he never stir ten miles from his own home. … (1)

 

The Pax Romana: it is the work of the Empire; a thing in our Europe hard to conceive of, but proper to Christendom, and perhaps if we could but see it to-day only awaiting our recognition. 

 

Those first four centuries of our era in which Christendom was founded  and Europe appeared, not as we know it to-day as a mosaic of hostile nationalities, but as one perfect whole, have never been rightly understood; they still lack an historian, and the splendour of their achievement, their magnitude and importance are wholly misconceived or ignored. In our modern self-conceit we are ignorant both of what they were  in themselves and of what we owe to them; and largely through the collapse of Europe in the sixteenth century and its appalling results both in thought and in politics we are led, too often by the wilful lying of our historians, to regard them rather as the prelude to the decline and fall of the Empire than as the great and indestructible foundation of all that is worth having in the world.

 

For rightly understood, these first four centuries gave us not only our culture, our constitutions,  our civilization, and our Faith, but ensured  them to us that they should always endure. They established for ever the great  lines upon which our art was to develop, to change, and yet not to suffer annihilation or barrenness. They established the supremacy of the idea, so that it might always renew our lives, our culture, and our polity, and that we might judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, defeat, nor decay. They, and they alone, established us in the secure possession of our own souls, so that we alone in the world develop from within to change but never to die and to be--yes alone in the world—Christians. 

 

And if the whole empire then took on a final and heroic form in those years of the Empire and the peace, Cisalpine Gaul more than any other province then came to fruition….and if we turn to the province itself, there is scarcely a town in that wide plain that did not expand and increase in a fashion almost miraculous during that period. It was then the rivers were embanked, the canals and our communications established for ever. There is no industry that did not grow incredibly in strength, there is not a class that did not increase in well-being beyond our dreams of progress.  There is scarcely anything that is really fundamental in our lives and in our politics  that was not then created that it might endure. It was then that our religion, the soul of Europe, was born, and little absorbed us so that it became the energy and the cause of all that undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which, rightly understood is Europe. Our ideas of justice, our ideas of law, our conception of human dignity and the structure of our society were then conceived and with such force that while we endure they can never die. (17-19)

 

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912.  

 

 

 

 

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Sending Messages

The video image of the recent destruction by an American rocket of a speed boat carrying suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean sea provided laughter on a late night TV show as if the participants were watching a Road Runner cartoon. But even if the men on the boat were participating in a deadly trade, it was not funny. Eleven human beings were obliterated in an instant.

I don’t know how the military knew the boat was carrying drugs, and I don’t know if it was legal for our military to attack it in international waters, but the destruction of the speedboat sent a clear message to all drug traffickers and their backers. The waterways are no longer safe for their traffic. To fully understand the strength of this message click on this link to a 13 minute account of modern weaponry, or see the video below on the US naval presence off the coast of Venezuela. The video is a must see even if you only watch the first half.

The news last week carried another message of a different kind. A local court (I don't remember where) convicted a man of using a knife to repel a home invader. The message of the court decision was clear. In the opinion of that court, it is not ok to defend yourself from a home invader. If you attempt to do so, you, not he, will go to jail. To drive home the message, a local policeman advised people to leave their car keys at the front door so that potential car jackers will not have to enter your house. Who could fail to understand or take advantage of such a message?

That case reminded me of the situation in California where a law specifies that thefts of less than $950 will not be prosecuted. People were quick to get that message. New businesses appeared that organized small crime. Other businesses went out of business. A few years ago on our annual trips to Alameda we would observe a huge Walgreen’s going up on its main street. On our last visit it was gone along with many other Walgreen’s throughout the state because of rampant shop lifting.

Some powerful messages often go unspoken. Many years ago, a co-worker told me he owned a 44 Magnum of the type used by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies. Other than a childhood BB gun, I have never owned a gun. When I asked him why he owned such a powerful weapon, he replied, “Better to be carrying a coffin, than to be carried in one.” That sounded creepy to me and I never thought to purchase a gun myself, especially with a house full of small children. 

Nevertheless, from that time on I always felt a little safer in the realization that a potential home invader might think that instead of an unarmed wimp like me, there might be a Magnum toting guy like my co-worker inside waiting for someone to make his day. 

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Gene Tierney: American Beauty

Gene Tierney was one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In the 1940s her great beauty launched her into stardom but she managed to become a fine actress as well. Unfortunately, behind the glamour was a bad marriage, a daughter born severely retarded due to exposure to German measles, and mental illness that ultimately brought an end to her career and almost to her life. 

 Here are the opening lines of her autobiography, appropriately titled, Self Portrait.

“It is a terrible thing to feel no fear, no alarm, when you are standing on a window ledge fourteen stories above the street. I felt tired, lost, and numb—but unafraid.

I wasn’t at all certain I wanted to take my own life, I cat-walked a few steps away from the open window and steadied myself, to think about it. The fact that I could no longer make decisions was why I had gone to the ledge in the first place. What to wear, when to get out of bed, which can of soup to buy, how to go on living, the most automatic task confused and depressed me.

I felt everything but fear. The fear comes to me now, twenty years later, knowing that at any moment I might have lost my balance. Then the decision would not have been mine. On that day, if I jumped or fell, either way would have been all right. There is a point where the brain is so deadened, the spirit so weary, you don’t want any more of what life is dishing out. I thought I was there.”

         

Tierney had been born in Brooklyn in 1920 but was largely raised in suburban Fairfield, Connecticut. Her parents were well off and even sent her to an exclusive finishing school in Switzerland during her high school years. At eighteen her family made a trip to Hollywood, where on a studio tour an executive, struck by her incredible beauty, asked her to take a screen test. A year later, after acting lessons back home and a small part in a Broadway play, she was back in Hollywood under contract to a major studio.

At first the studio did not know what to do with her. There was something exotic about her good looks and she was cast in a number of roles that had little to do with the person she was.

In 1942, for example,  she was cast as a charming South Sea  island girl in Son of Fury, an action adventure starring matinee idol Tyrone Power. In this film she hardly speaks of word of English, but her breathtaking beauty and innocence makes an indelible impression. 

Here is a list of what I consider to be her best films.

 

Laura: In 1944 Tierney became a full-fledged star playing the title role in this murder mystery that is now generally regarded as one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

Otto Preminger’s  direction of Laura received an Academy award nomination, and cameraman Joseph LaShelle won the Academy Award for best black and white cinematography. 

The cast was superb. Dana Andrews, playing a police detective, turned in his usual solid performance. In his screen debut Clifton Webb played a sophisticated, acerbic, and influential newspaper columnist, and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

Nevertheless, Gene Tierney stands out in Laura. From the opening credits even her portrait on the wall of her beautifully designed apartment dominates the film. But it is not just her looks. She plays a sophisticated urbanite whose  deportment and manner make everyone in the film, even her maid, fall in love with her. Her costumes, designed by famed Bonnie Cashin, are a lesson in how clothes define and make the man, or woman in this case.

 

It is hard to imagine that a whole generation has not seen this film. But the directing, the photography, the sets, the writing, the great cast, and the haunting song and score that permeates the film make it a true classic. It can be watched over and over again like any great work of art.

Leave Her to Heaven: Tierney’s performance in Laura led to a starring role in Leave Her to Heaven, a 1945 Technicolor drama that almost exulted in her good looks as well as the looks of co-stars Cornell Wilde and Jeanne Crain. 

Nevertheless, it is a dark film. Once again, Tierney gets to play a beautiful, accomplished young woman but this time jealousy and suspicion, that today we would call mental illness, lead to the break-up of her marriage and terrible tragedy.

In one unforgettable and terrible scene, her beauty only accentuates the horror of what is going on while she sits placidly in a rowboat while a young boy drowns nearby. Her performance in Leave Her to Heaven, gained an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: In 1947 she starred along with Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Tierney played an independent young widow with a young daughter who moves into a seaside cottage reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a deceased English sea captain. It is a charming story beautifully told and acted by the principals with a wonderful musical score by Bernard Herrmann.

Whirlpool : In this 1950 suspense drama, Tierney played a sophisticated suburban housewife who turns to a devious hypnotist for help in dealing with a secret mental illness. Her husband, played by Richard Conte, is a psychiatrist who is totally unaware of his wife’s sickness. Perhaps in this film she came closest to portraying her real self and her impending mental illness.

Where the Sidewalk Ends:  This little-known film is now recognized as a quintessential film noir classic. It is like a Laura reunion. Tierney is reunited with Laura co-star Dana Andrews, director Otto Preminger, and cinematographer Joseph LaShelle.The film is another psychological crime drama but centers around Dana Andrews who plays a rogue cop. Tierney, still beautiful, played what amounts to a supporting role. 

Her career would continue through the next decade but mental illness although it could not mar her beauty, limited her ability to work and she never regained her previous success or stature.

 In her autobiography, she tells the whole story not only of her screen career but also of her battle with the illness that brought her to the edge of death on that fourteenth story window ledge. Fortunately, her story had a happy ending.

 

 

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