Eleanor

Another bothersome issue related to our attempts to forgive people is, "So I no longer have hard feelings toward this person, but he or she is not at all repentant; how am I supposed to relate to him or her now?" And it's a stumper. I'm going to tell you about my former friend, whom I'll call Eleanor, to illustrate the problem.

Eleanor had a bad reputation in town. People warned me about her. But I liked her anyway, and seeing she was friendless made me want all the more to be her friend. She seemed to want the same, seemed to need a friend. She was smart, she was Orthodox, she had compatible views about nearly everything, she was fun to be with. In the course of several months, we became - I thought - close confidantes. Once, we even took a short train trip together, I to visit my mother and brother, and she, ostensibly but not really, to visit a son.

I knew she wasn't happy in her marriage. I sympathized when she left her husband and moved to another city. I was ready, of course, to say yes when her husband was found to be so full of cancer it was inoperable, and Eleanor, feeling the need to come back to Richmond, wrote me wondering if she could stay with us.

Demetrios, though, said we would just be enabling her if we consented to this. Pressed by me to explain what he meant, he finally sighed and said, "You should know she has been seen all over that city in the company of some professor."

I clearly remember my incensed reply: "What vicious gossip told you that?" and he said, "Put it this way: her husband has twenty-one first cousins in that city. Plus their spouses and their grown children. No way to eat out anywhere without some of them knowing. Not only that, she has even brought him to church a couple of times."

Although amazed, I was/am in no position to judge anybody, so I tried not to.

She called me on the phone when she had arrived in town, having decided to stay at her former house with her husband until he died. It was only going to be an estimated four months, at most.

"You can stick it out that long," I said. "You can be reconciled for that long." And she agreed, although she didn't intend they should live as man and wife. At least, she said, they could get along, and she could be kind.

It was only three months. When I heard that Alex (not his real name) actually was near the very end, I phoned the house and asked for Eleanor, and whoever answered the phone just said, "She's not here," and hung up.

And where did she turn out to be? Touring Greece and Turkey, and visiting the Patriarchate, with her professor/lover! She had to be summoned home, and arrived there barely in time to be with her husband when he died.

At the prayer service and the next day at the funeral, her sons wouldn't even sit with her; only her daughter did. At the cemetery, as soon as the last "Amen," had been prayed, she turned to the funeral director and said, "Get me out of here!" My main recollection is of her red shoes disappearing into the black limousine.

I called her the next day to offer condolences. She told me she intended to stay here in Richmond for the Forty Days (the deep mourning period for Orthodox Christians) and then go back to her apartment in the other city.

Long before those 40 days were up, she had married her professor and disappeared.

A few short years later, he also died, and she came back to Richmond to bury him in the plot beside her husband that had originally been bought for her. The only reason we found this out was, Demetrios happened to be at the church that day with business at the church office, and when he opened the door to the sanctuary, to go inside and pray, he found the funeral in progress - and an usher at the door who told him who it was, but had strict orders to deny entry to all but a very few whose names were on his list.

Okay, so as I said earlier, when someone goes away and is no longer in your life, you don't need to deal with the issue of, "What now?" But if that person comes back, then what? Or if the person doesn't go anywhere and you still see him or her regularly, NOW WHAT?

What do you say? How do you act? It's not the same issue, quite, as forgiveness. It presupposes you've forgiven, in the sense of giving up any grudge, in the sense of maintaining tenderness of heart toward the other. But even when that's the case, what are you now supposed to DO?

One Sunday a couple of years ago, I spotted Eleanor among the crowd at the coffee hour. I had no answer to these questions, felt completely flustered, and all I could say to Demetrios was the same thing she had once said to the funeral director: "Get me out of here!" so we departed hastily.

Again, I'm only using this story as an example. Unless Eleanor comes back to stay (and she won't, because she has always despised Richmond), it'll be a moot question. What still troubles me is the more general question.

I only know two, seemingly (but surely not truly) opposite things. One is, you have to keep on loving. "Bless those who curse you, do good to them who hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you."

And the other is, you must not connive in the wrongdoing, mustn't pretend it didn't happen (or isn't still happening), must not approve of it, or (I suppose, but perhaps herein lies a mistake?) must not appear to approve of it. Have nothing to do with them, is St. Paul's guidance, referring only to our conduct toward "the brethren," though, not unbelievers.

The problem is how to reconcile these two "musts" at the practical level. Sorry, I still don't have any answer. Any insight you may have will be most welcome. Meanwhile, I just stumble along day to day, and some days seem to manage better than other days.