inspiration

This may be a bit cheap in a way, considering I encountered this woman and her story for the first time last week on PBS program promoting the book Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling. Maybe I'm just appropriating Dr. Wayne Dyer's inspiration. But I just can't get this lady out of my head.

Here's the thumbnail sketch, lifted from the Amazon page for her book:

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.

Apparently, the bathroom was three feet by four feet in size. Apparently Imaculee's whereabouts were suspected the whole time she was in hiding. The bathroom was well concealed, but gangs of machete-wielding Hutus would periodically roam the house, calling to her by name, telling her they knew she was there, telling her how they would relish slitting her cockroach throat. She weighed sixty-five pounds when she emerged to safety. She's five nine.

I try pretty hard, but I catch myself slipping quite often and holding on to grievances and judgements about other people. In certain moods, I can get pretty worked up if a grocery clerk looks at me the wrong way. How much happier would I be if I could see past all that pointless crap consistently?

In the AW tasks and excercises, sometimes just for one specific question here or there, I have been asked over the past eleven weeks to imagine a "perfect" childhood. I have been urged to consider the specific what-ifs if I'd had a "perfect" childhood. I have been nonplussed at best and quite irritated at worst with these questions. (When I was asked to finish the sentence, "If I'd had a perfect childhood, I'd have grown up to be..." I wrote, "boring and arrogant.") I am me because, among other things, my past was my past and my parents were my parents. I may be beset by challenges stemming from past abuse, but it is in meeting these challenges that my character develops and my spirituality deepens, and I become more perfectly myself. I don't know how else it could have happened. It happened the way it did. I may have developed differently if I had not experienced abuse, but would I have been better?

I know how to forgive anyone for anything. I know that everyone is doing his or her best with whatever they believe have. I have a keen understanding of the tricky ambiguities of ideas like "good" and "bad."

At least I like to think it's pretty keen. Vanity springs eternal.

Imaculee Ilibagiza made positive use of circumstances horrible beyond measure and beyond expression, seeing and taking an opportunity not only that no one should ever be presented with at all, but that almost no one would even begin to see as an opportunity. She took ideas like "bless your enemies" and applied them far, far beyond what most of us would imagine to be their limits. She hiked directly through hell to personally deliver her humble, infinitely loving offering to God, and she came back alive. She sees the killers as fearful and sad. She wants to help them find the light like she did.

She's married now and has children; she lives in the US. The nightmare is behind her. But even twelve years later, she is so sensitive and present that she tears up when telling an audience that she still believes people are good. And even on TV, even on a book tour, her dignity and grace are palpably evident and absolutely astonishing. In the PBS studio at the pledge break of all things - what is more irritating than a pledge break? - I can hardly look at her or hear her speak without beholding the choirs of angels shining around her shoulders.

Writing this post brings me back full circle to an early post in which I discuss my mother-childhood stuff. Funny, that all came up far less often in the program than I thought it would. Anyway, I suppose the inspiration-share is meant to be more directly creativity-related. But this angel on earth and others like her truly inspire me, more, I believe, than the craft of any artist ever could. In my life and in my creative work, I want to be funny, insightful, smart, sad, dark, bright. I want to be brutally honest. Sometimes I think I'm just honestly brutal. But above all - underneath and around and through it all - may I be loving. Dear God, may I Love.