Forgiveness

Forgiveness:

I had a post at BlackFive responding to a lady blogger from the sinister side of the blogosphere. She had given us a backhanded compliment:

Do you think Jihad Watch and LaShawn Barber’s Corner and BLACKFIVE and Mudville Gazette and Wizbang got to be in the top 25 at TTLB only (or even mostly) because of their writing or their core fan base? Not at all! They zoomed to the top because bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Hugh Hewitt talked them up, linked to them, befriended them. It does not make me happy to know that people whose worldview is so narrow, intolerant, exclusive, and hateful are so much better at supporting their ideological soulmates than we on the left, whose values run to diversity, inclusiveness, a place at the table for everyone, human needs before defense contractors’ wish lists.

Yeah, the lady has a good backhand. Let me tell you about intolerance and hate.

About a week ago, I had one of the Wild Bunch throw me hard. (We're about to sell one of them, by the name of Blue Streke. He's an outstanding blue roan, with spirit. The guy came out to ride him on Saturday, and the horse bucked him right up into the air. Took two people on the reins to get the horse straightened out. The guy said, "If my vet says he's healthy, I'll take him." That's a horseman.)

This horse who threw me, I've ridden before. He is the one who threw me earlier last month, and put me briefly in the hospital. But he'd been scared by a truck that day, and on the day in question, he seemed to be calm. I'd ridden him since the incident without a problem, and he seemed happy. He came willingly to me when I showed him the rope, and he let me saddle him without any complaint.

In other words, he lied to me.

No sooner did I get on this horse than all fourteen hundred pounds of him started to run and buck. I pulled his head around and stopped him, with an effort. My partner for the ride was ready to go, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this horse, so I said I was going to swap out to another for the ride.

The instant he felt me take my feet out the stirrups, he threw back on with all he had. The young lady (same one from the missing-mare episode) said it was like watching a rodeo: he bucked and reared and fought as hard as a 1,400 pound horse can go. I had him in a headlock for a second, but he reared so hard I had to lean far forward to stay balanced. He got his head free, and then while I was forward he dropped and bucked and I went flying.

I landed right on my skull, with an impact that should have broken my neck. The only reason it didn't is all those years of jujitsu training and teaching: I fell exactly the right way, against instinct but with muscle memory. Because I had pressed my chin to my chest, instead of my neck breaking the impact was distributed through the muscles of my back and chest. My back still hurts every time I do anything.

The horse went running, and my brave but young companion foolishly went after him. It took me a couple of seconds to get to my feet (my Stetson had a big dent right in the back-of-the-skull section) and by the time I caught up to her, she was doing something I wouldn't advise any of you to do. My horse had run into the barn, and she had dismounted and followed him. She still had her horse by the reins in one hand (Doc, for those of you who remember the post about him) and the Wild Buncher by her other hand. He was still rearing and snorting and yelling when I got there.

This all means that she was in a narrow place, with an angry horse on one side of her and a horse that was increasingly frightened on the other, and she was holding both of them. Brave, brave girl. But it was not a good place for her to be.

I came in and took control of the horse that just threw me. In order to do that, I had to get his reins -- and in order to get the girl to safety, I needed to do it in a way that wouldn't further spook him, and therefore her horse also. I could see the fear mixed with the anger in the beast's eye when I grabbed his reins. There was only one thing to do.

I pushed all the anger out of my heart, let it go, and looked him in the eye. "I am not angry at you," I said in level tones. "Come on. Calm down."

A horse can tell if it's true. They know if you're mad. If I wanted him to be calm, he had to know I had forgiven him. All this was less than a minute after he lied to me, sucker-punched me, and almost killed me because of it.

Everything worked out. I convinced the young lady to take her horse out of the barn and go on her way without me. I got the horse to his stall, and took his tack off, so that I could go and hurt in peace. My back still hurts, but it will be all right in time. When the girl got back, I took Doc for a short ride -- because you don't want to get thrown and walk away without riding if you can help it. You need to get back on a horse.

This story is about forgiveness. If you're going to ride horses, you have to be able to clear your mind of hate and intolerance in an instant. It has to be truly empty of those things when you grab the reins or the halter of a frightened beast.

Now, there is (I admit) a certain part of me that thinks this particular horse would make an excellent rug. But it's not the part of my soul that entertains hate; it's the part that entertains humor.

I've said from time to time that I'm not aware of hating anyone, and I honestly believe that is true. There are people I like and people I don't; there are people I'm proud to know and people I think ought to be ashamed of themselves. I don't think, though, that I hate anyone.

The lady has a Shel Silverstein quote on her homepage: "If you are a dreamer, come in." My mother used to read that poem to me. If she thinks I hate her kind, she's wrong: in that she reminds me of my mother, I'm predisposed to love rather than to hate her.

What she may not understand about me and my kind could be explained this way: Shel Silverstein also wrote "A Boy Named Sue."

America, like the poet, has room for both of us. If there's room for the part that is 'a magic-bean buyer,' and there's room for the part that came "up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear."

Now, how's that for tolerance? For ladies and horses, I have more than you might imagine.