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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Category Archives: Forgiveness

Forgiving the White Invasion of America

11 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by Bill Watkins in Forgiveness, History, Poetic Blog

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Tags

Love, Truth

John Smith

-by Bill Watkins 8/11/2019

***

People living on prime real estate must fight hard to keep it.

The British Isles?  Spain?  That’s some beautiful land, and many tried to invade and conquer it over the years.  Because of this, armies raise up, take advantage of advantages in defense, say the invention of gun powder out of Asia in the ninth century A.D.

Another school will look at religion and spirituality, point to the evil in possessing, the evil in desire, the seven deadly sins as motive for crimes, invasion and war.  The bible is among other things, a law book, laying down principles of living that if followed, would allow a person to feel some peace, if not go to heaven itself.

Prejudice is the devil, the real monster in all this, judging others as less than to boost us up—FEAR.  We all self-aggrandize a bit, build up and defend ourselves.  All humans do, just as all plants and animals self-preserve.  So maybe we can find some forgiveness for European people, who came across an ocean to take land away from its natural inhabitants in what map-maker Martin Waldseemüller called “America” in 1507.

No justification, but forgiveness.  Call out land theft as wrong and only wrong, but forgiveness.  Abuse in Europe can never justify abuse in America…

But forgiveness.  I believe I will forgive myself, a descendent of white conquerors, when I find a bit of land in which to live, where I am confident no one stole it.  My mind is open, as one’s should be, to learn the way of first peoples—whether the Celtic Druid earth ritual, or the Native American dance as prayer.  The Aboriginal meditation, the Taoist retreat, the bow at sundown looking East to Mecca, Allah and Buddha in the sky of reincarnated dreams pointing us all in different languages toward peace of mind.

The enemy is prejudice.  A closed mind.  And if crimes have been committed over the years against first peoples, it’s the fear behind closed minds that caused them.  God of universal understanding help us, Higher Power from AA to the bars of abuse help us to the open mind that yields the enlightenment of Creation.  Understanding.  Compassion.

And forgiveness for the White invaders of America, who hurt themselves as much as anyone else, closing minds to the native, indigenous way of life under the glow of God’s nature without books.

Emoji Kiss

24 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by Bill Watkins in Forgiveness, Love, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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CIA, God, Joy, Love, Native, Peace, Poem, Poetry, Politics

Emoji Kiss

We are forgiven the moment
we ask for it;

but we cannot be relieved of
burden, until

we admit the problem.

We stole land in the fifteenth,
sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries because our weapons
were harder and bigger,

because we had a book we loved
and could justify stealing gold
and land with the idea that
bringing brown, naked, natural
people our book would surely
save their lives.

Hell is what you make of it,
heaven, too!

Sometimes there’s nothing left
to do in life on stolen land but
to do!

Kiss your enemy, invite them back
to the table.

Ask forgiveness, admit our faults
today!

Kiss your wife or friend when
the two of you have a bad day.

“Change your stars,” like William
did in that weird, anachronistic
movie with knights and Queen
music!

Slap the CIA an emoji kiss,
and forgive mass murder and lies;

no one I know tries to do wrong;
they at least try to find the right
book to their crimes justify.

The Forgiveness Tree

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Bill Watkins in Forgiveness, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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Tags

Forgiveness, Harassment, Joy, Love, Me Too, Me Too Movement, MeToo, Peace, Sexual Assault

Don’t load it up, it’s prone to
falling down, branches strong and true,
but even they wilt—

The song of childhood plays in the
ears of the Heaven-seeking; dream your
dreams, reach and achieve.

People, “brothers,” “sisters,” friends
who become better brothers and sisters
than blood bonds yield:

They snub you, cheat you, set you up and knock
you down.  Hurt, hit, hire or call on others
to hurt and hit.

You are on the ground and wonder as you
get stronger finally, “will I ever forgive
this transgression?”

Jesus said forgive your brother not seven
times but seven times seventy, or 490.  A lot of
times, but sometimes:

I wonder have I reached that threshold?
Do some hurts count as more, and so to
forgive them I get more credit?

I place it on the tree, forgiveness a great blessing
that can’t always happen overnight.  I water
that tree with prayer.

The best is still the one Jesus gave us, “Our
Father,” because it has so much forgiveness
in it.  “Forgive us, LORD, our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

And sun on this tree might be our willingness
to listen to love, to truth, to a whispering wind
that visits in the night,

Sometimes coming to us in dreams.

I return to the tree over the years, for sometimes
the hurt of error has lasted this long.  I stay willing
as sure as the sun it shines,

Even behind clouds it shines, I swear it! “Do not
swear,” reminds Jesus, and pray the prayer—water
running into wells made at planting.

Fertilize the spot by talking to other people about
your pain; perhaps they’ll have a story to share
with you that can help.

Forgive us LORD, our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us.  Seven times seventy,
or 490 times.  Don’t count;

St. Ignatius of Loyola reminds us not to count:
“to give and not to count the cost.”  To forgive…
divine, to err “human,”

Alexander Pope poetic over words to Shakespeare
and Frost prophetic, Longfellow the men read
and quoted by men,

As men and women, sisters and brothers, friends
and family who do God’s will try to amend and
work through another day.

Poems smile the pause that made Frost famous,
with him it was a sigh: Something true, firm and
spectacularly fallible reaches

up on the horizon of best intentions:

The forgiveness tree is in full bloom, the flower green
but dewed and so golden as we turn another cheek
in God’s time not ours.

To abuse I shall never bow down, but to forgiveness’
open door I shall never close and lock for I want
Heaven’s gate open as well.

As a child, hoping, believing and as forgiving
as moths trapped in a flame.  Perhaps it was my
fault, and if not:

Stay away next time

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