Finding Forgiveness

We all have it in us, so let’s tap into it! Seeing Harry Belafonte speak last night, I witnessed a man who listened to his mother at age seven when she took him aside to say “Harry, don’t you ever spend one day of your life without feeling like you are making a difference in somebody else’s life”. After hearing him speak from his heart for two hours, he was always filled with compassion and forgiveness, even though he suffered the same indignities his forefathers experienced just because of the color of their skin. These qualities fed him with the strength and courage to live by his convictions. Deeply a non-violent being, he successfully found ways to communicate with adversaries as well as solidify friendships with the likes of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King.

His amazing display of forgiveness demonstrates a trust in being in the right place at the right time. The gift of a ticket to the first theatrical play of his life lead him to become an actor. When the theater in Harlem ran out of funding during the WWII years, he discovered he could sing and, at the Vanguard in NYC, banned together with the likes of Charlie Parker to give birth to this nation’s first million-seller album, Calypso.

At 84, Harry is still going strong. He spoke for 2-hours without as much as a swig of water. Only at the end when people started filing up to meet him did he acquiesce and drink a bit of water.

Tim Robbins was his interviewer and opened with “Harry, the last time I saw you was in Sing Sing”. He was referring to a prison education program the two men were contributing to. They chuckled and Harry said, “One reason I accepted this speaking engagement was to be with you, Tim“. From that launch, they sat iconicly and humbly before witnesses of their genius. Names like Sidney Poitier and Eleanor Roosevelt sprang from the lips of Mr. B, addressing them with great admiration and true friendship. I am very familiar with Mrs. Roosevelt’s story. She, the ‘ugly duckling’, was raised in a very white, Anglo-Saxon family and sent away to school as an adolescent. In her family, blacks and Jews were treated with inferiority. Upon returning from several years away at school, she visited sewing factories as a humanitarian, breaking all family tradition. What she saw were sweatshops filled with mothers and daughters toiling over their sewing machines, some asleep from sheer exhaustion. These conditions touched her heart deeply. At the prime of her life, 18 yrs old, she started to open her mind to the prejudices she had inherited and began a life-long journey toward equality. Oh yes, the ‘ugly duckling’ was ugly no more. Her inner beauty reigned supreme over the veneer of awkwardness and even the sound of her voice. It was her commitment to forgiveness for all small-minded thinking that attested to her beauty and legacy. To have met her, must have been thrilling. Oh, Harry you are the man! Thank you for sharing you stories and your life with us. As my husband so eloquently expressed, “I felt like I was with him in Mississippi when he was talking about taking the $70k he had raised for ‘the cause’ to expel human suffering.” That’s when he had convinced his life-long friend, Sidney, to join him and they encountered the KKK. “That was serious”, Harry said with a shiver.

Harry Belafonte embodies revolution. Like Gloria Steinem, he lived through the 20th Century when all of our seeds of peace were planted. He admitted that we have been living in dormancy for decades. But now his renewed faith is the youth all over the globe watering and cultivating those dormant seeds. Just like the elephant that lives in drought, keeps visiting her watering hole and digs and digs until water finally appears. Relentless faith and forgiveness 24/7 and beyond, into infinity.

May we all live in finding forgiveness.

Mr. Belefonte’s new memoir is now available.