what you can't hold onto

a horse, a circle, and forgiveness

“The thing is,” she begins, and as I turn on the circle with my body swinging wildly out of the saddle, form lost, mind lost in the temporary feeling of being unseated by his surprise movements, I know what she is going to say will be hard.

“You have to fix it, and then you have to stop holding it against him.”

We are always talking about horses and we are always talking about more than horses.

This horse is feisty, freshly back to work after several weeks off, and I am anxious even before I swing my leg over. My trainer spots it immediately, and her first command comes even before we pick up a trot: “Get out of his face. Stop snatching at the reins.”

We can seize at control even when we don’t notice.

We turn on the circle, one way, then the other, and he starts to fight a little bit at one edge of the circle’s entrance. He turns the other way, he kicks out, he takes off into a trot I immediately believe I cannot manage, and then I start bouncing around, losing my grip in the saddle and then grabbing at the reins:

“Let go of his face!”

I swallow the impulse to cry, or try to. I forget how to breathe. I am so frustrated I can feel it radiate through my body, unable to remember even the most basic things about riding.

“You have to fix it, and then you have to stop holding it against him.”

—

As far as the east is from the west, it says, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. As far as the sun’s rising place to the place it goes down, this expression of flinging away from us the things that we do that damage our relationships with one another, with God, it says. That is how God has chosen to be with us, holding us, but not our faults, in being.

And then we are told we should also go out and do likewise, freeing each other from the constant remembering of our past sins by the wild proclamation that they are forgiven, which is to say, they are remembered no more.

It isn’t that I think my horse has done something bad to me. I don’t. But when I turn on the circle and I keep holding against him the possibility that he will break away from me again, that he will not pick up a good trot, that he will canter off on the wrong lead -

here I forget myself the work that is mine to practice, in every moment, in every space: to forgive is to remember it no more. To forgive is to stop holding against someone a thing they had done, to lay it down, to abandon our own anxieties about it and our own mistrust about it and our own secret resentful feelings about it…

And I must do that here, on this circle. I must ride the circle each time like it is brand new for us both, the chance to do it right, the chance to do it well. I must ride the circle with this partner without holding against him the previous thirty seconds.

—

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52.7)

Could I announce peace in my body on this circle? Could I bring the good news - which is the best news - that life is long enough to always try again? That every turn on this circle is new, that every moment is a remaking of the one before it, full of possibility?

I reluctantly let the reins slide a bit from my fingers. He softens, instantly. “See, there,” she says.

Trust can be built long and slow, years upon years. Trust can also be given again and again freely, even when we want to withhold it. I want to withhold my trust and my forgiveness to this horse who has scared me, but not wronged me.

Only if I give it can we become new.

Only if I let go can we go forward.

Only if I offer peace can we ride on, together.