No Regrets

[Note to the reader: There are sections that were extemporaneous or from outline. I have placed an * in front of those sections]

Well, we've rung in the new year, survived the hype and found our paths as they were before -- in motion, evolving, informing our ways and walking. Now's the classic time for resolutions, this year perhaps more poignant than others because of our society's emphasis on the century and on making history. It is the way of things to hope for the best in our living. We all look for meaning, yearn for clear vision and claim our lives by marking time.

The language concept we know as resolution comes from the Latin verb resolvere which means "to loosen again, to dissolve, to melt". A resolution, then, is a gesture towards transformation—an effort toward changing the substance of a situation: unraveling a dilemma, dissolving an impasse, clearing the way for future action.

Resolutions revisit that which is already in our lives. Whatever we bring from the past informs the resolutions we make, whatever efforts we have made inspire the ambitions we affirm, whatever dreams we have welcomed shape our future visions. The goal is fulfillment, an end to a yearning and a beginning of a new way of being.

Probably the most difficult step in the process of resolutions occurs in the beginning -- clearing the way for future action. And the most imposing obstacles which hinder fulfillment are our regrets. I offer today a focus on what Emily Dickinson called "the presence of our departed acts" -- the power of regret in our lives. The title "no regrets" is not a vision of a perfect life with no mistakes, nor an affirmation of a pathological life with no responsibilities or care about consequences. "No regrets" is a hopeful epitaph, an ideal to aspire toward where the ebb and flow of the efforts in our lives are courageous, conscientious and compassionate. It's the ideal of a state of being grounded in self acceptance and forgiveness. A place where choices are made with confidence in embracing the follow through.

Henry Miller, 20th century author, once offered these thoughts: Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for those (him) who have (has) the vision to recognize it as such.

So today we're going to summon the should have—would have—could haves ut of the shadow recesses and bring them out in the open air for a better look. And like most bullies, these should haves, would haves and could haves—our baggage of regrets—won't like the exposure. Let's see if we can lighten the load… or, at the very least, give our potential more room.

Please don't get me wrong. Regrets have an important place in our journey toward self understanding. They help us get in touch with the power of our choices, they help us know the truth of evolution and they help us realize the precariousness of our mortal lives. Regrets can keep us honest and humble, earnest and grateful, and they can tune our forgiveness.

However, regrets can also provide a blanket of remorse, a stagnating nostalgia and disabling grief.

What keeps the balance? A sense of humor about absolutes and the understanding that "ultimate control" is an illusion.

Thurgood Marshall, former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme court for 24 years, gave a comment near the end of his life that is a fine epitaph indeed. I did the best I could with what I had, he said in one of his last interviews. This man, who was the first African American Supreme Court Justice, who had won 29 of the 32 cases he brought as a civil rights lawyer before the court before his appointment, had this to say about his life: I did the best I could, with what I had. Did he have regrets? No doubt he did. Just as we all do. But he knew how to use them to advance his life knowledge. He knew how to embrace his life, foibles and all. We cannot skip the lessons to learn, that is the rhythm of our lives.

I've been listening to some tapes of interviews of Joseph Campbell, renowned scholar, lecturer and teacher of sociology and mythology. He spoke in one interview of an encounter with one of his students after a lecture at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She was all of 19 years of age and said to Professor Campbell. We've gone from innocence to wisdom in this lecture, she said, thinking she had made a deep connection. That's interesting," he replied, "the only thing you've skipped is life. Wisdom only comes through experience and experience is messy.

Now here's an opportunity for me to hang onto some regret. The remorseful kind. The "I should have" litany. Professor Campbell taught his last year the first year I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College.

*Many ways to package this regret.

*Beat myself up—should have paid attention…

*Blame my advisors, or parents—why didn't anyone tell me?

*Chalk it up to experience, recognize can't do everything and try and cull the lost wisdom some other way.

And yes, the pang of regret comes over me at times, but I do my best to let it pass through me and I move on. Because you see working through regrets is the work of grief, for regrets are the feeling of lost opportunity or the end of an illusion.

Remorse is the regret that hounds one's self worth. It is the loss of innocence, the realization that nothing is pure and no one is perfect. Its popular form often reveals itself in mournful wishing: "I wish I had never done this, said that, seen this, chosen that." It is the realm of the "should haves" whose inner tyranny speaks to a sense that a better person would never have missed the opportunity, would never have been so ignorant, would have somehow known.

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin coined a popular response to this indulgence: So you're disillusioned," he would say, "Big deal. All that means is that were illusioned in the first place.

*This regret is probably the most dangerous—can eat you up inside.

Can create a feeling of unworthiness.

Can create a barrier to relationship. Block intimacy. If they really knew me they could never love me, etc.

*Calls for the work of self acceptance. Turn contrition into apologies and learning the lesson. Turn the fear into penitence, work through the doubt with another try, a similar journey or forgiving another the same mistake. Be proud of where you are from where you've come from and allow for imperfection.

*Same formula as grief: As time goes on it becomes less and less your identity. Never goes away, but is less important in your daily life. And the grief turns to gratitude for all that was learned and the increased ability to help others.

*Forest's story (A reading from Life Lines). —women liberated from a false sense of control by the pain. Going from the bad advice to her own understanding of what's important.

And then there's the I could haves and I would haves.

*Dangerous opportunity for victimology. Assumption: if I had the right resources, if someone helped me, if this or that person didn't do this or that, if I was only given half a chance etc.

This kind of regret is very much like homesickness—the yearning to go back to the (often non existent) place of comfort and protection. It is the grief of the loss of safety, the loss of simplicity, the loss of being taken care of.

When I hear the phrase Those were the best years of my life—you are not dead yet. Yes, some moments in our lives shine beyond imagining and the memory bolsters our lives—but we don't know what's next.

*I could wallow in the New York City crowd. (Group of artists now lost to death or relocation) My life is simply different. I cannot qualify it in terms of my whole life. It ain't over yet.

What this calls for is honing our ability to forgive ourselves, life and those who have hurt us. Not to forget, for then the lesson is not learned and the hurt may repeat itself, but release its hold on our going forward.

Without forgiveness, the past would ever determine the future. The baggage we all carry would remain intact and grow daily, until there would be no room for change or anything new. Without forgiveness, we would eventually cease to exist. We'd cease to learn, we'd cease to grow, we'd cease to see outside our own wounds, our own rage, fears, walls and assumptions. Without forgiveness we would be defined by those who hurt us, giving them power over us: defined by what "they" did to us. Without forgiveness we become professional victims, letting blame shape our identity and imprison us in reactive behavior. I am this way because of that thing or those people. I can't change my behavior because I was too hurt.

If we do not have forgiveness, we release responsibility for our lives and let someone else's actions, whether recent or in our childhood, determine how we make our choices. Without forgiveness we simply are not free… none of us… because we all make mistakes and we have all been offended in some measure or another. If we lock ourselves into the hurt or into the blame, then we will inevitably experience a crisis of courage to go on. We do not want to be become imprisoned in the hurt and its manifestations.

In this way forgiveness is a discipline toward transformation—both a strengthening and release of self that eventually creates a more powerful present than the baggage we carry. world. It helps us see, also, how not to take ourselves so seriously, how not to take our dramas so seriously, how to find a way to cherish all our life and avoid that which destroys our sense of hope.

In the words of Henry David Thoreau: Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. The power of the soul, fueled by love and compassion, is far more mighty than we can comprehend. The stuff of our lives has a flexibility beyond our imagining. Seeking and granting forgiveness is an essential part of summoning the understanding that life is a gift and we are ever emerging into all that we can be.

Regret Ritual: (Folk wrote a regret, put it in a pot that was then burnt—let the smoke remind you of the ability to transform the regrets to learning)

Benediction

May we find ways to name the hurts we inflicted and experienced and find the heart to use that new knowledge for better ways of being. May we someday find ourselves fully known and fully free and know ourselves to be lovable, learnable and part of the glory of creation.Amen.