Today is Oct. 13, and as I am writing, I am thinking about the word release.
A few hours ago, and half a world away, Israel and Hamas each began to release the hostages they had been holding captive for over two years. As the first phase of an emerging peace plan unfolds, Hamas released their Israeli hostages, and the Israeli government released their Palestinian hostages.
For both the Israelis and Palestinians, the release of the hostages was greeted with spontaneous and uproarious reunions. Families and neighbors danced and shouted, hugged and cried as they welcomed their loved ones home. The unbridled joy over the release of the hostages on both sides is truly beyond description.
What also has gone undescribed is the relief of the hostage keepers. In a much more subdued way, they too surely experienced the happiness of the release, no longer having to spend night and day in jails and detention centers, guarding against their prisoners’ escape, providing food, water and sanitation to hostages and living with the poisonous hatred toward their enemies that somehow justified their work. The hostage keepers were hostages too.
But today, the day of release, the hostages were set free and so were the hostage keepers. They could each return, unbound, to their former lives. Neither had to carry any longer the crushing physical and emotional weight of their captivity. Both the captives and the captors were liberated with the chance to begin anew.
And so, I am thinking about the word release. I am thinking about how release is a gift to hostages and also to hostage keepers and how release set them both free to rediscover wholeness and joy.
And, I am remembering the night, years ago, when I first learned about the gift of release.
I was laying in my bed in the middle of the night, wide awake with anger. I was in seminary (graduate school for theology students), and a fellow student, Michael, had taken advantage of me. He and I were partners in a group project to which he contributed almost nothing, except putting the professor to sleep during his part of our presentation. To make matters worse, a few days later, he absconded with a stack of my library books, dropped out of school and became an Episcopalian, leaving me with a bad grade and a hefty library fine.
That sleepless night, he was my prisoner, hostage to my much-deserved indignation. I was chewing over and over again what he had done to me and savoring what I would like to do to him. It felt somehow fair that I should be punishing him with my outrage. He had it coming. But, what once felt fair began, in the wee hours of the night, to feel foolish. While I was sweating like a mad man, I knew that somewhere Michael was sleeping like a baby. I realized that the only hostage that night was me. So, I decided to release him, not for his sake, but for mine. And, so I did. I opened the door of my anger and let him go free. When I released him, to my surprise, I found myself released too. I, the hostage keeper, was set free. Soon, I was asleep.
And so, I am thinking about the word release, and I am thinking about the hostages that we may be holding in the prisons of our contempt and anger. I am thinking about how we are bound to them, making hostages of ourselves too.
I am thinking about the word release and remembering that in the Christian tradition the word forgive is literally the word release. To forgive is to release. I had always thought that forgiveness was the gift that you gave to the one who had wronged you; as I have grown older, I realize that forgiveness is also the gift that you give yourself, releasing you from the horrible work of being a hostage keeper.
Release. It is a life-changing and life-giving word. I’ll keep thinking about it.
