While walking my dog this week, I was catching up on “This American Life” podcasts. It isn’t the nerdiest thing I do, but it is up there with geeking out over office supplies and loving the smell of libraries and first day of school white canvas Keds.

This particular pod was entitled “Random Acts of History.” The opening story seems so benign as I write this, so unassuming, so simple, because it is about a historical marker – a metal plaque in a place I have never seen, in a city I have never visited. Ahhhh, but the meaning, it has gripped me and won’t let go.

The story goes that in the 1830s as the Creek Indians were being forced west, a deportation of sorts if you get down and dirty, Chief Eufaula asked to address the Alabama legislature. In that address, he said these famous words, (which are now emblazed on a Tuscaloosa historical marker,)

I come here brothers, to see the great house of Alabama, and the men who make the law, and to say farewell in brotherly kindness before I go to the far West, where my people are now going…In these lands of Alabama, which have belonged to my forefathers and where their bones lie buried, I see that the Indian fires are going out. Soon they will be cold. New fires are lighting in the West for us, and we will go there. I do not believe our Great Father means to harm his red children, but that he wishes us well…We leave behind our good will to the people of Alabama who will build the great houses and to the men who make the laws.  

There are so many things I could say here and they all sound cliché. High road. Bigger person. Chief = some serious EQ. In essence, it could be interpreted that Chief said, “We go in peace because we are awesome and you stay here in your big house because you suck.” It is debated by historians that the Chief’s address was sarcastic, but Native American scholars rebut that being the case. The Chief’s words might mean many things, but for me they whisper one true thing – forgiveness.

I come from a long line of professional grade grudge holders. (Disclaimer: My mom is the single best and biggest influencer in my life, so back off with getting all judgy here.) If you crossed my mother, there weren’t many second chances. She held a grudge against my aunt for my ENTIRE life. It had to do with a ten dollar pig. I. AM. NOT. MAKING. THIS. UP. 

The story goes that my parents bought a pig from my aunt with a promissory note for ten bucks to be paid at a future date. My parents were poor and had four kids under the age of six. My brother Jeff was sick and they were given the choice between paying for the pig and buying him medicine. My aunt made a remark about the pig rent coming due and my mom wigged out. I picture her dramatically throwing the ten dollars at my aunt and screaming in a vigilante voice that falls somewhere between Norma Rae and Chewbacca. I am not sure about what happened on the actual battlefield as this was before I was born. I only know that some 40 years later, yes FORTY, when I asked my mom why we disliked this particular aunt, she told me this story with great animation and righteousness. Years post-pig, my aunt even tried to make amends by sending a check for my mom’s birthday. My mom ripped the check to shreds and threw it in the trash. Pig grudge held. I told you. Not many second chances.

The other quality that I reflect upon about my mom is that she wasn’t for sale. She was who she was – beautifully imperfect – and congruent. If she liked you, she probably loved you and if she didn’t, well, you figure out what finishes this sentence. I wonder now what the absolute black and white resolution did to her relationships and perspective. The Little Blue Hospice book explains that people reconcile the internal in their final days and hours, I hope that my mom found a way at the end to absolve her pigs.

Perhaps this is why Chief Eufaula’s words so speak to me. Forgiveness is something I struggle with when I feel that I am right or have been unjustly treated. I can hunker down in some swine grudge and cling to it. We are talking life without parole here behavior. Maybe being forgiving isn’t a quality but rather it is a verb.

Please don’t misunderstand my message, there is certainly a time to stand and fight and I am a “got your back” kind of girl when the chips are down. And, even after the fight, what lies deep within our soul is a choice for moving forward. In the words of the great philosopher, Clark Merrill, “People aren’t necessarily against you; they are just out for themselves.”

Chief wasn’t thanking the “great fathers” for evicting him and his people from their homeland. He wasn’t begging for them to change the unjust laws and let him stay. He was forgiving them. He was setting the course for what was ahead for his people by releasing the control that Alabama had on them. This doesn’t forget or forgive the act; it DOES disentangle us from resentment and hopefully manufactures the feeling that many of us yearn for – that of flying free.