Christmas is a time of year when I remember all the things I’ve done wrong and all that has been done wrong to me. Certainly I’ve gotten angry, but often I’ve fallen into sadness over missed connections and missed opportunities. I’ve thought about friends but haven’t called them. The ones with whom I’ve had a falling out, I’ve been tempted on several occasions to pick up the phone, and like a child say, “I love you. I don’t even remember what happened yesterday.” I often think of my father in that way. What would change if we had reached out to our loved ones before they’d passed and said, “All is forgiven; please forgive me.” As it happens, I reached out to my dad, and he reached out to me before he died.
Over ten years ago, before my father died, we let each other know we loved each other and that we forgave each other for everything that separated us during my childhood. While growing up, I often experienced my father’s anger, and he would often see mine. We were of the perfect storm; add the fact that I would rebel at his attempt to control me, and the weather report would show a potential hurricane in sunny Cerritos, California, where I grew up. We were two air signs, he Aquarius and I Libra, doing verbal battle and kicking up clouds in every direction.
I realize now that my father struggled with his own demons, and I often ended up in his crosshairs. I struggled to understand what it was that made him so angry with me. I thought I needed to be silent and invisible, but what he was struggling with had little to do with me. I was simply a mirror reflecting his soul, and he saw in me his own image.
My mother would often tell me how so much alike we were. Maybe he’d seen it, too, and wasn’t so much angry with me but with himself. I never figured that out, but what I did discover was that in spite of all the noise, beneath the storm was a calm center of deep love. I will always cherish the conversations we had before his death that made me see my dad through loving eyes. When I said to him, “I’m sorry, please forgive me for how I’ve hurt you,” he replied, “Please forgive me, for how I’ve hurt you.”
There is a traditional practice in Hawaii called Ho’oponopono which means to put things right. Families would have a conference together and set their relationships right through prayer, discussion, confession, repentance, mutual restitution, and forgiveness. This ancient practice of Ho’oponopono has preceded Christianity in the Hawaiian culture and continues to be practical today. As families and communities both look for a means of resolving their problems, they consider the practice one of the soundest methods to restore and maintain good relationships inside and out of the family that any society has ever devised.
I discovered Ho’oponopono when I attended a meditation group conducted by Daryl Frazier (Hunaguy.com), a healer and motivational speaker who uses Hawaiian methods of healing in his practice. He teaches that we are all connected to everyone we know by aka chords and that these chords must be cut to restore inner and outer harmony. In the process of cutting these chords, we say, “Please forgive me if I have harmed you. I forgive you for any harm you have done to me.” I found the meditation to be very powerful and thought of my dad and others whose chords I needed to cut so I could get on to the work of forgiveness. Once past hurts are resolved in this way, greater peace and harmony can be achieved. Once this has been accomplished, we can now honestly say, “Aloha Ka Kou,” which means I greet all of us with my breath.
Hua Hui Ho (until we meet again) in that sunny plain on the other side of the horizon, Dad and all who’ve passed, “Aloha Ka Kou.”
