For  much of my younger years, I used apology as a way to control a situation. Rather than sit in what's uncomfortable, I took responsibility for everything. I mean EVERYTHING. I apologized before anyone actually told me there was a problem. I offered up my ego and my agency, the authority to determine right and wrong, more quickly than I offered up anything else. As the years went by, I grew to understand that this was another form of manipulation; a kind of killing-them-with-kindness that prevented true, real, hard, and glorious relationships. For a few years after that, I got stubborn, really stubborn. Taking the other side, I refused to apologize for ANYTHING but then, that didn't work either. Bottom line: there is no rule book, there is only relationship.

 One of the pieces that started to shift my over-apologizing came in the form of a reflection from a beloved Ojibwe teacher-friend. She was reflecting on Catholic patterns - and most of my people have been Catholic for a looooong time - and noticing how much those of us shaped by Catholicism are quick to offer an I'm sorry followed by an air of expectation….. Like ok, I apologized, now you need to forgive me, with or without the Hail Marys. The apology, she noticed, was not the center, the climactic arc, but, instead, the forgiveness was. This waiting-for-forgiveness was shaped by a culture that put priests as intermediaries between a person and God. The pattern it set up was this: apologize/forgive and then move on. Forgiveness was owed; it was an expectation. And when an apology came and immediate forgiveness was not on the other side, my people could get really mean.

 The oldest root of the word apology is, as close as English will let us say it, to pick over words or to find the right words. By the time the Greeks came along, this word," apologia,"  had become more specific; the act of creating a well-reasoned response to an accusation. Words with purpose, words that build a case, a response, against someone's accusation. It's the kind of thing that a defense attorney does in Court: well-reasoned doesn't always mean just or true. It means well-reasoned. The meaning of apology shifted over time again to become, not just the well-reasoned response but the feeling that goes along with the response; regret for a wrong-doing. This is what the word most often means now. Here is my reason, my explanation, but please feel my regret as I share this story with you. Have you ever had someone spend a bunch of time explaining why they did what they did when all that you wanted was for them to hear you tell them you were hurt?

 Apology,  in its oldest form, is only one thread in the work of acknowledging impact and coming back to be, literally, at one with community. As Mia Mingus writes, there are ways to apologize that are consent-based and honor the aliveness of the person we are speaking with; that are relational rather than transactional. She says this, which touches me deeply:  We need to move away from “holding people accountable” and instead work to support people to proactively take accountability for themselves. If you haven't read her piece, take a moment and read it now. She breaks apology down into four parts: self-reflection, apology, repair, and behavior change.

 I have read and shared her piece multiple times. It is straight up and concrete about how to be in a situation that might feel complex and layered and full of defense and pain. Each time I read it, something else rises inside of me. I pause in the reading and wonder:  can apology acknowledge more than an individual act but the actions of an entire family, an entire community, an entire people? Are they the same four steps and is this enough?

 I shudder each time a Pope asks for forgiveness for some overwhelming act of violence: the covering up of sexual abuse by priests, the conquest of Mexico, the treatment of Orthodox Christians, the Inquisition, the treatment of LGBTQ Catholics. I shudder at what the Church won't apologize for which includes, as of this writing, the stealing of indigenous children from family and home and the creation of mandatory residential and boarding schools. Not all of those papal apologies were just words. Some of them, particularly the one focusing on the victims of sexual abuse by the priesthood, came with cash and commitments for cultural change. And still, each time I read of another papal apology - or its lack, something in me shudders. Sometimes,  the mere fact of the apology rises up a kind of rage and revenge feeling that digs its heels hard against any conversation about forgiveness.

 One of my favorite novels from the 1990s was written by Sherri Tepper. In The Family Tree, Tepper draws a world in which the earth is beginning to fight back against climate destruction. Towards the end of the book, one of the storylines reveals itself as a future in which nonhuman animals have become the primary intelligence on the planet and those named as humans have become their servants. In these last chapters, the humans throw off their saddles and bridles and proclaim that their subservience is complete. Apparently, says the storyteller, the humans made a species-vow of atonement for all of the horrible things that they, that we had done to the planet. Their atonement was to take on the roles that they had forced onto the bodies of nonhuman animals; to become beasts of burden. The novel ends with the humans completing their 500 years of atonement and reclaiming their agency and humanity.

 Yes, it's a heavily Christian message - sacrifice as the means to redemption - but what keeps itching at my brain is the scale of commitment made towards this collective accounting. It is so concrete, so clear, and there is a beginning and an end. We committed these atrocities, we acknowledge them and we will make these clear and direct actions, over generations upon generations, to give time for the mending to complete. Apology/repair/behavior change woven together in an act following collective reflection.

 I am writing this during Christian Lent, a period that represents some of the worst examples of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim Christian violence across multiple histories while also being the most sacred period in the Christian church. And yes, that contradiction pretty much tells the whole story.  After the upswing of wild unhindered life (Mardi Gras/Carnival/Shrove Tuesday), we are humbled into remembering that our life ends, that we are flesh that will decompose into dust which is Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent begins. Practicing Christians sit in the truth of that to-dust-we-return for 40 days, the time between Jesus' supposed death and then resurrection. Easter, then, is the celebration of life on the other side of death. One of the ancient practices that eventually became Lent is the Memento Mori which, in Latin, literally means to remember your death. On Ash Wednesday,  the faithful go to mass where the priest draws the sign of the cross in ash on our foreheads and then prays: remember you are dust, to dust you shall return.

 The oldest and pre-Christian use of memento mori as a practice comes as Rome was expanding its empire, conquering one community after another. The Roman Empire spread, far and wide, first for the glory of Rome and then later, after it adopted Christianity, for the glory of Christ. The story of this older memento mori goes like this: during each victory parade, an enslaved person stood next to the commander and whispered into his ear, over and over again,  remember that you must die, memento mori, remember that you must die. And the Commander listened; it was part of his responsibility to hear each repetition.

 Every interpretation of this story that I have read names this action as a way to keep the celebrating commander humble, not overwhelmed with too much pride and self-confidence in the face of victory.  I have read nothing that mentions this enslaved person, standing there, just to the commander's back.  I have found no mention of what it must have been like holding on to the sides of the chariot as it bounced and shook through the streets of Rome or the streets of whatever town had just been overcome. Likely, through the streets of the town that the enslaved person had just been captured from. How is this detail not the most important of the story?

 During the Roman empire, most enslaved people were taken from the lands spread around what we now call Europe, as well as around the Mediterranean. The word "slave" comes from the word Slav and the Slavic lands (including what we now call Ukraine) were conquered again and again and again. In some books I have read, the greatest number of enslaved people, and the greatest repetition of raids to claim land and bodies by Rome and a range of other occupying forces,  came from the Slavic lands. Yes, I am remembering Ukraine as I write this. One theory names the unceasing targeted enslavement in these lands as a response to the duration and scale of Slavic resistance.  

 So here is the story: an enslaved person, likely someone captured from the land that this commander is now marching or riding through, whispering in that commander's ear, remember you will die… all of this to keep the commander humble? I can't help but think of white resistance to Black people's right-relationship refusal to ignore the impact of 500+ years of enslavement, to indigenous right-relationship refusal to forget broken treaties and stolen children. This refusal is resistance, unceasing unbroken resistance. What comes up in many white bodies in the face of this resistance is not humility but fear and shame - which then turns into violence and rage which then keeps the cycle of violence moving, around and around, like the wheels of that chariot. Was the commander, standing on their chariot, moving through the remains of a town that had been demolished, possibly with the broken bodies of the enslaved person's kin decomposing in the sun, was that commander's only response really humility? Or was this instead a directive: get your back up, stiff and strong, and do not let them see your weakness. Meaning, no regrets, no takebacks, no softening or warmth because remember, you must die, you will die as the wheel of revenge strains to come back around. Heaven forbid (no pun intended) that we should fight for the glory and soft warmth of our connected humanity. Heaven forbid.

 In the middle of writing this piece, I gave a somatic session to someone who wanted to deepen their ability to feel and be apology. They could feel the way their body contracted, tightening around the feeling of apology with a shield, a protective force that kept their softness inside. There is a reason for it, as there always is: histories of violence and humiliation, whether personal or collective, that created an automatic shut down response to the vulnerability of acknowledging impact. As we were talking, I kept seeing accountability, apology, as a kind of exposure. It's what happens when we toss aside the shield that has been protecting us and stand there, chest bared, heart visible, and say yes, I did this and I see how it impacted you, and right now, at this moment, I am connected with you and I will not leave. I will feel this thing and then stay in the unsteady space of waiting to hear your response. Exposed. Vulnerable. Unguarded. It's why I always rushed my apologies, hopping over the exposed and vulnerable part to manipulate the moment so that I could feel safe again.

 What would happen if the commander turned around on that chariot and looked into the eyes of the one they had enslaved, smelling the burning of the village and the bodies left to die, and opened their heart wide, like a tearing, and took on the entirety of yes, I did this thing. I did this to you. I know that I will die but before I die, I will see if I can come back to being the person who deserves this life that I share with you. Memento mori.

 What I know, what I believe deeply is that the one who has caused harm is not the one who determines accountability, both its specific path and the moment of its completion. The one who has been harmed determines what repair should be or if any is required.  In Tepper's book, is the generational atonement what the animals would have wanted from their human abusers? To switch places? The human species decided on this action for themselves. They decided the action by listening to the call of Spirit which, I guess, is the other answer. Barring a clear invitation for accountable action from the one or ones who have been harmed, there is only the voice of Spirit to guide the next step, the voice of the aliveness that connects us all.

 The oldest meaning of the word apology is to pick the right words; to find the right words. If I stay with the feeling of that, separate it from the way the words shifted to mean building a case, and instead stay with something older, then maybe finding the right words is about waiting and listening for the right words to come.  Listening for the stories that need to be told and witnessed,  not just of how we have been hurt but also how we have picked up the weapons and used them to destroy a life, whether literally with a weapon or with the force of a vote, the dismissal of a pain or a with the choices we make to protect our own kin and families which then places a burden on the kin and families of others.

 Sometime over the past year, I was helping with a call-out situation, actually two different ones at the same time and each with the same storyline. In each case, a cisman had been called out by a ciswoman in ways that were very clearly about abuse histories and mental health struggles, using the court of public opinion to find the cisman guilty because none of the close-up friends would blame him for her pain. And so each of these men was found guilty, at least for a period of time, before the other details came through. I was involved with both but with one of them, I was very close in and was helping him to navigate this, to sense through where to say a thing and where to just be quiet. The whole thing was hard and unfair, not one of the moments where a call out is a way of pushing back against power but a moment when a call-out was a way of working out personal trauma on the body of another. We talked a lot about how this was an individual experience that he was going through, but it was also a collective and a generational experience. The woman calling him out had been deeply hurt by many men in her past, as had the women she grew up with. There had never been anyone to stand on her behalf, to fight for her in the way that would have prevented the violence she experienced. By the time she got to this man, her lover at the time, she found enough softness and give, enough space in a different kind of relationship, for all of those years of violence to surge forward and scream never again…. And she used his body as the lever for her jump.

 At one point, as we were talking together, I said to him:  you know, I know that you have not done what she claims. I know this with every cell in my body, that you are not individually responsible for the pain that has gathered for so long in her deepest insides. I am just having a moment where I wish you had a sense of being part of a people. I told him, I wish you or someone who is like you, would just stand and say, with full dignity and ground, I will hold this. For right now, I will hold the truth of what my people have done. I will not flinch or explain or individualize away from the violence that my people have committed and are still committing right now. I will hold this for you, for now, for a while, as and if you need it until the message within comes to say that this holding is done. Then I will pass it to someone else and he will hold it for a while… and then when he is done, he will hand it off and again and again and over time, we will take turns standing in this, receiving this, and knowing the truth of this pain that our people have caused…. And we will do this, collectively, until it is no longer needed. Until the violence and its echoes are no longer true.

 He listened to me and nodded, heart-understanding this. And he had also been hurt, early on in childhood as well as more recently, and that is part of the story and that matters and still… I wanted him or someone like him to stand and hold the scream of impact, even if not personally accountable, without flinching or defense. Just once. Or maybe more.

 The right words are not a defense. The right words are also not always an understanding, a recitation of facts and figures. The right words do not come from our logic-brain but from somewhere else. From all of who and what we are, and even then they are not right or wrong, they are just the words and sometimes they are something more.

 I know that my hunger to sort through the meaning of all shapes of impact is about the hurts that I still hold, the lack of accounting from those in my past. It also tells you about what I seek to account for in this white body, the descendant of French colonizers who came to Turtle Island and claimed this land for king and God, putting guns into the hands of their children to shoot the Haudenosaunee who fought back against their landed entitlement. Those are my people. We did that.

 In addition to the individual accounting of self-reflection, apology, repair, and behavior change, I am hungry for the collective version of this thing. The linking of arms and saying, us, our people, we did that or you, who are part of me, did that and I will hold this with you. It's the other half of ancestor work that I want more of my people to do, especially the Christian lineage ones. Yes, here is what we claim and remember from the times before disappearing into whiteness and here is why we were hurt which is why we ran to this other land, at the same time or even louder, here are the specifics, the stories, the connections that have shaped the violence of this moment and here is how I or my people have been a part of creating it as true. Here is how my people were enslavers or homesteaders or the ones who built the oil industry or the ones who found ways to cheat those people of their livelihood. Here is how my German line was part of creating the conditions for Nazism, even as we left before the second world war. Here is how my Italian line benefitted from the global economics of the Atlantic slave trade, even as we were not living here during the times of legalized slavery. Here is where I will stand, not only for myself but for my people, and hold this story, these stories, for as long as possible and let the telling of these stories, the words that come from my deepest insides, shape who I am in relation to you. To get here means not just self-reflection but collective reflection; the resurrection of stories that tell the truth of where we caused harm as well as how we were hurt. In the same what that some grief has to be held collectively, so, too, does some accountability need to be held together as much as alone.

 And sometimes, then, maybe, will come repair because it will be clear and right and not confusing, and until that happens, we continue to live in the words of here is what we did and did not do. And then will come behavior change, please god, the slow shift of culture and action and system away from what was to something entirely new:  to come back to being the people who share this life with you, other humans and nonhuman kin.

 Memento mori, remember you will die, and when you die you will become an ancestor. I want to think of that enslaved person standing behind the Commander and whispering memento mori as an act of resistance and as a promise and a reminder, all at the same time. What is the story that you want your life to tell for the generations to come? What is the best way you can honor this sacred connected thing called life while you have it? A cell cannot protect and grow at the same time. If it only protects itself, it will die. Take off the shield, whispers the one behind the commander, and expose your heart. Heart is the root word for courage, taking the stance that moves from love over command. Memento Mori, remember you will die but before you do, maybe it's possible to come home.