How dare I love you?
The first time I read the poem, I felt sick. Sick with disgust, overwhelmed by the feeling of unsettled shame. How could someone dare to love the ultimate perpetrator… Someone did, his Mother did, Father did; when he was a baby cooing and making sweet, funny noises, a person loved him and protected him. When he was running down the road and skinned his knee, someone somewhere helped and loved that little boy. His parents had hopes and dreams for the young child. Aspirations of greatness, the achievement of success, and the dream of their child reaching his full potential.
I struggle not to fall into the seductive trap of divine righteous judgment and place myself on the throne of God, the place of the most high, chaining my relationship to the dammed. From this position, I let my ego take the wheel, where I can comfortably absolve all my responsibility to the ethereal ideal, to the “non-defined,” and the “whatever the fuck I want.” Can It be that easy? I just wash my hands of the dirty work of presence, the crushing weight of responsibility, and the terror of being deliberate in my actions. Who can I blame if I am not in control? Them, not me. Who can I throw under the bus? Those people. And if I dare to dig deep, I fail to recognize the truth. That this subject of my righteous disgust at its core. Is me. That what I am rejecting is my capacity for cruelty to others, my pettiness, shame, and mistrust.
Poem to Hitler (Bert Hellinger)
Hitler, I look upon you as a human being Just like me, With a father, with a mother, And with a definite destiny. Are you therefore superior to me? Or are you inferior? Are you better than me or worse than me? If you are superior, then so am I. If you are inferior, then so am I. If you are better than me or worse, Then I am that, too. For I am a human being just like you. If I were to respect you, then I respect myself. If I detest you, then I detest myself. Dare I love you? Am I obliged to love you? Because if I don’t, Then how could I be allowed To love myself? If I acknowledge that you were human, Just like me, Then I must look at something That created both of us --- Equally --- Something that created you as well as me --- Something that even determines How we are both destroyed. How could I possibly exclude myself From our common ultimate source --- All the while I am excluding you? How could I ever blame this ultimate cause And raise myself so far above it As long as I am blaming you? Yet I dare not pity you. The ultimate cause of your rise and fall Is no different from mine. I honor it in you As I honor it in myself, And I surrender to everything It has created in you --- And to everything it has created in me --- As well as to all it has created In every other human being. - Bert Hellinger《Gottesgedanken》p.247 (Translated by Thomas Mellett)
Bert Hellinger wrote a poem to Hitler. He wrote a poem to Hitler’s humanity, to the same life force that created all of us. The cosmic momentum that possesses the infinite capacity for destruction and radiant joy. When I first read the poem, I felt shame, like a coward unable and unworthy to stand in the presence of Grace. Now that I understand it, I feel love. I recognize the perpetrator in myself, the hurt person that is entangled with the baggage that I carry. The pain that wants me to be loyal, to veer off my path and continue in the old pattern. The same pain that fuels righteousness.
Now, I choose love. Love for the shared light, the love that created all of us. The recognition of the you in me, love for the victim and the perpetrator alike. If I can find love in the worst of us, I will thrive with the grace of the best of us.
- John Acosta
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