The Revenge Business

I have been in the Forgiveness Business for quite some time now. In my world view, instead of governments encouraging victims of crime to seek retribution, they would provide the resources needed to find reconciliation and wholeness. Perpetrators would not be thrown into cells with little hope of emerging sane or remorseful. And human beings of all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, backgrounds, beliefs and tattoo styles would search for and honor our similarities, before casting dispersions on our differences.

Who said it best? Inigo Montoya, that's who. The man who spent his life seeking revenge on the man who killed his father. "My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." There in the Princess Bride (one of my favorite movies, and a great book, too) is a profound lesson about forgiveness.

Here is what Mandy Patinkin, the actor who played Inigo, has to say about the revenge business:

No More Secrets - What I Learned at the Bottom of the Grand Canyon.

This morning I told the world a secret. It has been something I have been carrying inside of me for 16 years, and has only come out now because of my month in the canyon. While there I wrote about many things: the weather, the beauty, the geology, the people, the way we live and the way we die. But never in that time, or in any time, did I write about a stain I had carried with me since shortly before I entered the canyon for the first time - back in 1996.

That changed today, when the Sunday Statesman Journal published my feature story about what I learned at the Grand Canyon. As I wrote this piece, it became clear that I was not the same person who had drove to that canyon in late January. That somewhere in those days and nights fixed on a cliff, I had been shaped into someone stronger and more aware. We have very little time on this planet, and we can spend it letting our wounds shape us, or letting them be part of the whole tapestry of who we are.

Beginning today, I choose the later.

Here is a link to the article. Lessons of the Canyon

-Naseem Rakha 3/24/13

Application Essay for the Artist in Residence

I admire those that can capture the canyon with paint, pastel, music or film. But the canyon is also story and poetry and prose. It is the narrative of mountains and oceans and ferns and cacti, of kivas and catacombs, of things here, and things gone. It is the tale of water, and change, and storms that carry sediment, and walls that cleave sunlight. It is natives sharing stories from mouth to ear, and handprints on a wall saying remember. Formations like Zoroaster Granite, Vishnu Schist, and Cremation Pegmatite must have been named by poets—people who understood the magic and influence of words and who wanted others to understand that when we speak of the forces that shape the canyon, we speak of greater powers.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon it was from its base. Starting at Lee’s Ferry I entered the canyon’s marble gateway, gliding through its waters deeper and deeper into time. Kaibab, Toroweap, Muav, Tapeats. It was autumn, 1996, and I was on an 18 day self-supported trip. I was a geologist, turned environmental educator turned mediator turned journalist. Just prior to launch, I had spent several days at the Oregon State Penitentiary covering a story for National Public Radio on the first execution of an Oregon prisoner in more than 30 years. The assignment left me drained and confused, obsessed about questions of right and wrong and the choices we make.

Then I entered the canyon.