Happiness for Benjamin

My brother is working in the Netherlands for a couple of months, and he feels lonely there all by himself. Today he asked me to send some happiness his way, so here is my best attempt. Dear Benjamin:

Remember the long summer days when we were little kids? Even though mom could hardly get us out of bed on school days, as soon as school was over, we jumped out of bed at first crack of dawn, and we ran down to the back yard to play. Remember how we used to make soup and magic potions out of the berries that grew on the hedge, and soak in the old metal tub when we got hot? Once when you were just a toddler, your sisters and I dressed you in one of our old bathing suits. It was hot pink and very girlie, but you thought it was the greatest thing in the world to look just like your big sisters. We still have a picture somewhere of you in the pink suit, splashing in the tub with a big grin on your face. Those days were nothing but happiness, and it didn't matter that rust was peeling off the old tub or that our family was poor.

Growing up, of course, robs us of the utterly carefree joys of childhood. But its glimmers are still around you in the simple things - the rays of morning sunshine, the satisfaction of a good meal, a hearty laugh with a friend, the way humans still fall in love despite thousands of years of heartbreak. In a way, your ability to feel dissatisfaction or emptiness is the other side of a coin that has a happy face. Until very recently - and in many parts of the world it hasn't changed to this day - all but a few people have experienced heartache and toil as such obvious aspects of daily life that they know little else. You, my brother, feel the loneliness of this season because you have known many other, sunnier ones. The best way I can send you some happiness in this cold time of year is by stating it loud and clear that this too shall pass - so you might as well get out there and earn yourself a better next season. Remembering this is how I survive in this dreadfully frigid place with six-month winters - and you know just how much I hate the cold. Winter is much easier to live through if it's in the shadow of the coming summer. It's not endless, so I might as well enjoy some sledding or snow fights! So think of the warm summer days in our back yard when it gets cold, and I hope they warm you up on the inside so you can put up a snow fight or two before it's all over.

Couch time

Today marked the beginning of a highly unusual week. In fact, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a week such as this one.

I am not working or going to class, and I don't have any plans for the next seven days.

When I realized this today, it gave me an odd feeling. I couldn't remember the last time this happened! Of course, I remember the last time I was off work for a week: my friend and my sister were visiting, and I was showing them my new home on this side of the Atlantic. The time before that, I took time off to travel to Poland to work at an arts festival. In the last two years, there have been a few week-long research trips or visits with family. But as much as I rack my brain, I can't remember the last time I was home for a week with nothing urgent on my to-do list.

Before I moved to America, week-long periods of rest or mere inactivity seemed a lot more common. It may have had to do with the fact that I lived in the world of academia, but I live in the same kind of world here. It may also have to do with being in a doctoral program now, so perhaps what I say needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Yet when people ask me if there is anything that surprised me about life in this country, the pace of life is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Americans work a lot more and take less time off than people in Poland. While I admire the work ethic I see here, I find that it sometimes goes too far - people seem to take pride in always staying busy, never missing a day of work, or giving back paid vacation days, which creates a whole culture of overwork-ness. What gets lost along the way is time to just be, to sit back and reflect on the purpose of all that frantic activity, be silent enough to pray, to remember friends and think new thoughts.

It is perhaps a mark of my advanced acculturation that the first thing I thought of today was making a to-do list for my week off. There is laundry to be done, my heinously messy closet, shelves I got for Christmas last year still waiting to be hung, heaps of unanswered emails, a Christmas letter that is already late... I didn't make a list though. I sat on this couch for most of the day, at times immersed in a novel about nothing academic whatsoever, and at times mildly uncomfortable in the silence. Tomorrow shall worry about itself - today I had the good sense to leave the worrying to the couch.

Photo courtesy of Becca

A Day in the Life

For one day in November, Billy and I had a chance to participate in an amazing art project made possible by our dear friend Becca. It all started a couple of months ago, when I was looking at our wedding pictures and the thought occurred to me that the photos most of us have in our albums are taken on extraordinary occasions that represent a departure from what life is normally like on a daily basis. There are pictures of weddings, vacations, Christmases, graduations - important days that happen just once. Most of our life, meanwhile, happens between those times, monotonous and undocumented. Yet it's those repetitive days full of repetitive activities that constitute most of our lives, and those things often go undocumented. In five years, will I remember the shape of the leaves on the sidewalk on my way to the bus? Will I be able to picture our first apartment, the look of my bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth every morning, the slant of afternoon light through the kitchen window?

Some time later, I was talking with Becca, who is an amazingly talented artist and the owner of a small business called Liminality Photography. She was telling me about a wedding she had shot, and I shared my recent thoughts with her - how it's a great thing to have a record of the grand days, but I'm sad that we don't capture the mundane ones. That conversation was how the idea of a Day in the Life photo shoot was born. For one day in November, Becca followed us around for an entire day - waking up, walking around our neighborhood, going to work, having late night drinks with friends. It is a record of not just one day, but a unique season of life turned into art. We're so grateful to Becca for creating this, and our hope all along was that these photos would inspire others to document the precious details of our daily lives.





































All photographs copyright of Liminality LLC

Two Sides to Every Story

I recently received a phone call from a client's father who was irate about something I discussed in session with his son the previous evening. I explained to him my rationale for saying what I had said and how it was beneficial from a therapeutic standpoint yet he was adamant that I was in the wrong and demanded I apologize to him and his son or I could no longer work with their family. I could not in good conscious do what he asked so I was fired from that client. I was of course comforted and supported by a number of fellow therapists and friends who said that I was right in my actions and my therapeutic stance and that this man was just a big bully. I am not going to say that I didn't make any mistakes yet am confident in the piece I held my ground on. Yet what disquiets me is that I am guessing this man also has a number of therapists and friends surrounding him telling him how right he is and how I am a horrible therapist. I run into this dynamic often where there are two sides of the story, often in the context of relationship, and it amazes me how both can be equally convincing and for all intents and purposes both can be "true". It is a myth that if we only apply the same laws and measures of reason that we can make a definitive judgment of Truth and all come out with the same conclusions. (Thank you modernity) We live in an age of reason like no other in the history of the world yet there are still just as many arguments between people and just as much hurt caused due to different perspectives that do not accept one another. And I think this is how things are going to continue. It makes me wonder what it would be like after the resurrection when the lion lays down with the lamb? I imagine there are still going to be differences of opinion as we will, I am guessing, still be subjective beings with different likes. (I hope so at least. or maybe everyone will finally realize that Green is the best color and Chipotle the best burrito!) I think the difference will be that we will recognize that there are different perspectives and that those are valid and worthy of respect. Love will cover over a multitude of perspectives. But in the meantime that is not always the case and leads to so much sadness...

A Short History of Patriarchy

Being the enlightened and emancipated couple that we are (well, and strapped for money as well), Billy and I decided this year to take turns cooking.

Before that, I made most of the food for two simple and related reasons:

1. I'm better at it
2. I genuinely enjoy cooking
(As in, I admire vegetables at the farmer's market like some people admire sculptures in a museum, and there are few things I enjoy more than hosting a feast of a dinner party for friends)

So for as long as I had time to do it, I gladly reigned over the kitchen.

The time condition changed radically when I started my doctoral program. Being the enlightened and emancipated couple that we are, we both thought it was not fair for just one of us to do all the cooking when we both work about the same. So we decided to take turns - he cooks for a week, I cook for a week, and that way we can shop for whatever ingredients we need for the whole week. By the end of the first month, I began to feel like the bones of patriarchalism that I thought I'd buried a long time ago were sticking out of their shallow graves right and left.

It was not Billy who dug them up, either. As soon as his schedule got a little busier and preparing meals became an extra stretch, I was overcome by a sense of guilt and responsibility. Whenever it appeared like cooking was causing him any stress, I jumped right in to rescue him and say that it was ok, I could just do it, don't worry about it. Somewhere deep down, I had it ingrained in me that even though it's great that he's "HELPING", it is ultimately MY job to feed the household. I kept doing this even though it left me tired and at times bitter that "I do more of the work around here". It took a few long conversations to make me realize that my constant rescuing did not help either one of us - it actually made Billy feel terrible about not doing his part in our house.

All this made me think again about the meaning and relative novelty of domestic equality. My deep-seated sense of responsibility is probably a thousand years old. It took birth in a cave or shack, at a time when the roles of men and women were defined by their physical attributes and how those translated into their ability to survive in a hostile world. Over time, these differences were translated into timeless roles sanctioned by deities of all sorts and shapes. At one point in the past, this role division allowed our species to survive, so it became entrenched as the ultimate norm.

It reminds me of something I noticed about my grandparents a while ago. To survive the war and the hard times that followed, they went into a kind of survival mode - a total focus on the basic necessities of life that cut out marginalities like emotions for the sake of overcoming external threats. That strategy probably saved their lives, but when the war was over, they were so used to functioning this way that they went on in the same way, bringing about alienation and lack of intimacy. In survival mode, there is often only one right way to go, unanimous action is crucial, and dissent can be fatal. This is how you function in crisis - but if it becomes the long term operating procedure for a marriage, for raising children and sustaining a family, the same thing that once saved your life becomes deadly. I can't help but think it's the same with patriarchalism - it's a strategy that once worked very well for us, but in a changed reality it threatens to erode the well-being we've fought so hard to achieve. That is what happens, for instance, when a woman is expected to still take care of the home and raise children even though she works equally to the man outside the home.

I've found that the adaptation of operating procedures to new realities can be especially difficult for people with strong religious beliefs. As people of faith, we believe the Divine Being revealed Him/Her-Self to humanity, and if He/She did, isn't it reasonable to assume that the Revelation was singular, unchanging, and once-and-for-all? If so, both men and women working equally outside the home a shift to a post-industrial economy don't mean a thing, because gender roles have been defined once and for all by God.

Within my own religious tradition, I find two strands that delightfully subvert this gateway to fundamentalism. First is the underestimated and underinterpreted biblical Wisdom literature, where we often see two contradictory statements right next to each other. Which one is right? Which is the divine will? It depends! Wisdom is not a once-and-for-all formula, but rather the ability to choose the right formula for the right situation, God's redemptive gift for fundamentalizing humans. The second is the Incarnation itself - the ultimate act of Revelation was not a holy rule book or codex, but a Person - thoughtful in solitude at dawn in the Galilean hills, tongue-in-cheek at a wedding in Cana, mad as a hatter at the cleansing of the Temple. Proclaiming a message that notoriously throws our expectations upside down - last being first, poor being rich, humble exalted, the Kingdom all unlike what we're used to.

This incarnate wisdom of God (incidentally or not quite so incidentally personified as a woman - Sophia - in biblical wisdom literature) is ultimately why I continue to practice taking it easy on the couch while Billy cooks, and telling myself it's ok. It's not as hard as it first looked.

None Are Righteous

I am personally not a believer in the concept of "inherited sin" in the sense that all humans are "born sinful" and therefore deserve to die for their inherited ontological sin. This idea has its roots in Augustine's view that sin was transferred biologically through sex, which in turn was borrowed from the gnostic idea that the the body is evil and the curse of physicalness was past on through procreation. Yet this morning I was thinking how we are all born into sin. We were having a discussion around breakfast and hypothesizing whether it was sinful or not to own a cappucino machine. (My father in law was railing against material excess) I made the statement that I thought it was sinful to own an iPhone (or any cell phone for that matter) due to the Coltan necessary to make the device, which comes from war torn countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and is used to fund dictators, warlords, and rapists. My anti-civilizationalist friend would make the argument that we are constantly complicit in the rape and murder and deforestation around the world, not directly but by virtue of supporting a system that facilitates these crimes. In fact, being born in the United States is to be "born into sin", that is, born into a sinful system that you cannot help but be a part of. (What do you think of that Augustine?)

It is pretty overwhelming once you start to think about all the ways in which you support an unjust system and how no matter what you do, you are supporting the death, pain, and destruction of thousands of people. This I think is where the need for grace comes in. God knows that we are hopelessly mired in injustice and She understands that. That doesn't mean that we are "off the hook" and don't have to do anything about it. It means that He frees us from apathy and the feeling that we have failed before we start. She wants us to do our best to bring the kingdom of heaven to this plot of land and spread it like mustard seed. Lord Have Mercy On Us.

The Discipline of Happiness

I have been thinking lately how happiness is really a discipline. If you are not happy or feel unbalanced in life right now, these things are not going to magically appear in front of you someday. We often think "If I can just get that new job" or "If I can just move to a bigger house" or "Once I retire", "Once the kids are out of the house", "Once School is done", "Once I am promoted", "Once I am (Fill in the blank)", THEN oh yes, THEN...I will finally be happy and content and balanced. But this magical moment never comes. Happiness and balance are things that need to be started right now and cultivated as well as sustained by hard work and discipline. I have realized the real need for myself to set aside time during my week for things that I enjoy to do and that give me life. I have found that if I do not set aside time for these things and fight for them, they will always allude me and even if I were to switch jobs, I would find myself in the same position, gasping for breath and wishing I had the time for the things I love. For instance, I would love to write a novel. But this novel is not going to write itself and I doubt that a situation will come along where I will have a few months of free time (unless I get laid off: Knock on wood) to spend on it. If I want to write it, I am going to have to start today, and set aside 10 minutes or 30 minutes and grow space for this hobby. And I will probably put it off until tomorrow (which really means a few months) which is fine, but at least I will know that it is my own choice and I won't be able to complain about how I don't have the time or don't have any hobbies.

Samson

Samson is the name of the new raccoon in our backyard. I have seen him twice now hanging out in the bushes near the fence, just staring at me. This time instead of trying to speak his language ( a mix of squirrel and swahili ), I spoke to him in English in hopes that he has picked it up over the years of living among us. I told him that I mean him no harm and will allow him to remain here in peace, provided that he not eat the pumpkins I am trying to grow this fall. It is funny how I just read an article yesterday about how we humans anthropomorphize animals and impose morality upon them. We try to tame them and try to find a kindred spirit within them yet all that is present is the empty and cold eye of nature staring back at us. Killer Whales with cute names turn on their trainers after years of working together, Chimpanzees maul their owners faces after they treat them like sons, and grizzly man's grizzlies eat him and his girlfriend after years of "friendship". We think that sharks are evil and wicked for doing what they are made to do. Yet here I am feeling that same desire within me to talk with our new resident, to connect to the wild as if I had a supernatural power and ability to be understood by the savage beast. I will even name him Samson (It could be a girl for all I know,:) ) And I dream of one day inviting him into our home for tea. Maybe one day I will hear a knock on the door and it will be Samson wanting to come in and talk about relations between our species and the politics of the animals living in the alley. We will wax long and eloquently about the divide between Man and Beast, the prejudices on both sides, the unfair profiling (not all raccoons are thieves of course, they can't help it if they were born with a mask), and of course we will touch on our abuses of the planet, how plastic is causing cancer in so many raccoons these days and how the young ones are getting hooked early, how more and more coons come to the city in search of jobs because their forests are being developed into upscale housing and of course global warming. Yes, we will talk late into the night about the world's problems, decide that there is nothing that we can do about it except live a good and simple life, and then...He will bite my face off.

Animal Arithmetic

Since seeing Jonsi in concert on Sunday, I've been listening to his music non stop, and found this song an exceptionally fitting soundtrack to my thoughts on human mirrors. It is dedicated to my spiritful friend Elizabeth with beautiful feet who composed many a great soundtrack for my wanderings.



Wake up, comb my hair
Making food disappear
Riding bikes, making out
Elephants running down

You and I ran away, got lost in the eve
Saw the most colourful fireworks

Every time, everyone, everything's full of life
Everyday, everywhere, people are so alive

We should all be (Oh Oh Oh) alive!
We should all be (Oh Oh Oh) alive!

Horfandi, þegjandi, tala við, skríðandi
Dreymandi, strjúka af, koma við ekki má
Mála á líkama, spilað á renglandi
Hlaupandi! Leikandi!

Get it on, get it on, fucking on, spúandi
Get it on, bring it on, fucking it, kæfandi

We should all be (Oh Oh Oh) alive!
We should all be (Oh Oh Oh) alive!
We should all be (Oh Oh Oh) alive!
Let's not stop, let's go and live!

I see you're colourful : I see you in the trees
I see you're spiritful : You're in the breeze
I see it in your hands : Tree fingers through a bean
I see you in the sand : Roll down the stream

I see you in the trees : I see you're colourful
I see you in the breeze : You're spiritful
Tree fingers through a bean : I see it in your hands
You're rolling down the stream : You're in the sand

I see you're colourful : I see you in the trees
I see you're spiritful : You're in the breeze
I see it in your hands : Tree fingers through a bean
I see you in the sand : Roll down the stream

I see you in the trees : I see you're colourful
I see you in the breeze : You're spiritful
Tree fingers through a bean : I see it in your hands
You're rolling down the stream : You're in the sand

I see you're colourful : I see you in the trees
I see you're spiritful : You're in the breeze
I see it in your hands : Tree fingers through a bean
I see you in the sand : Roll down the stream

Human Mirrors

A few months ago, we participated in an art show for our dear friend Jayme . Partly by virtue of our friendship and partly because of the character of her art, it was the most personal and touching experience with art that I am likely to ever have.

Over the period of almost a year, Jayme listened to the stories of eighteen individuals and painted what she heard - abstract portraits of their inward journeys and movements of soul. I walked around the room covered with goose bumps. Many of the people she painted were friends and community members, people with whom I eat, laugh, study, party and generally live life with on a weekly basis. Yet Jayme's art opened a window to their inner worlds that seemed all the more sacred because it involved her own response to what she saw.

Jayme's gift to her subjects was that listened to each person for as long as they chose to talk, and then reflected what she heard through artistic expression. Here is you, she said. Here is what I saw. It was her gift of truly seeing these eighteen unique people that gave me goose bumps. Here is you, she said, and you are beautiful. Not in a rosy, pretty way, but in a messy, sometimes bloody-red, sometimes pitch-black way. Glorious. Magnificent.

Ever since Jayme's show, I've thought a lot about truly seeing people. The bursting life and glory of her paintings surrounds me every day, if I look deep enough. Even without looking deep enough, the glimpses of human beauty regularly cause me to catch my breath. Not only artists see others from more angles and in more colors than those others see themselves. Some may disagree, but I'm inclined to believe that we all construct our mutual identities through the spoken and unspoken messages we communicate to one another. We become what we are seen for - from the kid who flunks out of school because he keeps hearing he is stupid to the woman who radiates from the inside because her lover can't stop saying she's beautiful. You know the saying that behind every successful man is a woman? I'd say that behind every successful, happy, fulfilled person is someone who thinks that person is wonderful - and tells them so. I wonder sometimes if this is a big part of why people crave romantic love and partnership - to be truly seen and well-reflected, to be the hero of someone's narrative, to look into a human mirror and see a character we may want to identify with. So what does it look like to pick up the paintbrush and mix some colors? Could it begin with something as simple as saying not just "thank you" but "I think you are"?

Retirement

My wife and I have been pondering recently the feasibility of the American cultural value of retirement.  Specifically the idea that one is supposed to work hard and pay their dues so that when they reach 65 they can retire and not work for the rest of their lives.  We have been meeting with financial planners in the last month who have been trying to sell us this dream and give us their best advice on how to get there.  We have come to think, however, that there may be some flaws in their assumptions.  First of all the amount of money that would be required to cease working after 65 would be unrealistically large if one were planning to live off of the interest alone.  In order to keep up our standard of living with 1 car in a 2 bedroom (really 1) apartment with all the trappings of daily life we would need around $500,000-$750,000, assuming that we would earn a 6% return each year.(My parents suggest I would need 1-2 million)  And that would not be the kind of retirement that many Americans dream of which includes living in florida, eating out, traveling when they feel like it or buying big toys.  Many people I would assume have discovered that this is not realistic and have saved up equity in their home enough to sell it off and, with the interest on that plus supplements from social security, eek out a living.  Another method of retiring is by doing what my father is doing and working at the same job for 30 years and getting a pension for the rest of his life.  Neither of these last options sounds appealing for us since Social Security may not exist by the time we retire and neither of us is planning on working at the same job for 30 years.

Yet despite the lack of feasibility for us to save enough, this dream is based on recent cultural assumptions that have been lacking for the majority of human history and for the majority of current cultures around the world.  A major factor behind this manner of retirement is due to the cultural value of not burdening our children with caring for their elders and conversely valuing not having to care for your elders.  I can see the appeal of this sentiment since I would neither enjoy changing my parent's diapers or having my children change mine.  Yet, I wonder if something is culturally lost if we follow this idea.  Does this create more distance in our families? Does it teach us to not take responsibility for others?  The rest of the world seems to take caring for your elderly as a matter of course.  

It is also interesting that it is a recent idea that people would stop working before they were no longer able to.  I grant that the increase in the life span has complicated things where people live a lot longer after they are no longer able to work, which gets expensive.  Yet the model that most Americans seem to be shooting for is based off of rich CEOs who can afford to not work after 65.  This model would not be applicable to most Americans nor I would argue sustainable for our society.  

So here is our plan.  Firstly, if we have children, we need to teach them that it is our value as a family to care for our elderly and model this with our own parents. (They won't care for us if we ship our parents to the nursing home :) )  Secondly, We plan on working until we can no longer work.  Thirdly, we see the need for rest from work as important in order to maintain sanity and quality of life so we propose the idea of a "Sabbatical" every 7 years.  After saving enough money over seven years of hard work we would have a year long break to reflect, rejuvenate, and plan the next part of our lives. (And get excited about working again.)  If we start this plan when we are 30 we will have 7 sabbaticals before we are eighty.  Over this 50 yr span we would need to save roughly $280,000 (assuming $40,000 saved for each sabbatical yr,~$6,000 saved each yr), about the equivalent of a nice suburban home.  

One potential difficulty I forsee would be getting hired again after our sabbatical year.  We both have fairly marketable qualifications and are in careers where I think it would be possible, yet the older we would get the more difficult it may be to be hired by companies.  It would also be difficult to save $6000 per year especially if we had children and limited our income to one provider.  Also I have yet to do the math on what would get us more bang for our buck in terms of if we were to invest $6,000 in the stock market every year.   We will keep thinking about this one.  :)

Paved with Good Intentions

Over the Christmas break, I read a book recommended to me by a professor in response to a deep sense of unease that I felt in some of my classes last semester. The author of "Dead Aid" Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian economist educated at Harvard and Oxford, and her thesis is far from politically correct: Development assistance funded by the West is doing more harm than good to the African continent. Against the voices that call for more and more aid to the developing world, she shows how the African nations' current dependence on foreign aid for recurring expenses breaks the ties of accountability between governments and their people, shifts the source of incentives from the prosperity of citizens to the whim of international development agencies, and fosters a culture of corruption. At face value, it makes sense that if a government depends on someone other than its own people for much of its revenue, it will not care as much about ensuring that the people live in a climate that fosters the growth of businesses and makes hard work profitable. It also makes sense that in the presence of a large pie of foreign money attracts those who would like to have a slice just to themselves - thus the Swiss bank accounts of African dictators and their aides.

A similar argument was recently put forward by Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist who also wonders how it is possible that since the 1960s the West pumped over $600 billion into Africa, but the GDP and life expectancy in most of the countries who received the aid have actually fallen. While the relationship between the two is hard to establish, especially given the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it is troubling to think that what we consider as goodwill and charity of Western nations may actually be contributing to the plight of countries where life expectancy is under 40, and most people live on less than a dollar a day. It is especially troubling to me given my current field of study, international education development, which trains Western specialists to help solve the problems of the developing world. The ensuing dilemma is not a comfortable one. Do you rush to the aid of people dying of hunger and preventable diseases and by your presence reinforce the deep causes behind these symptoms, so that the scenario is repeated in the next generation? Or do you, as Moyo sugessts, exercise "tough love" and turn off the stream of money that corrupts politicians, risking that your action might cost the sick and hungry of this generation their lives? Whose lives have more value - the sick and hungry of today, or those who will repeat their lot tomorrow if something does not change? And finally, why are the terms of this debate determined on American campuses and not by those whom they most intimately concern?

The older I get, the more questions. I persevere because I hope for a third way that is based neither on guilty charity nor on tough indifference. I don't know quite what it looks like, except that I know that it is harder, and in light of the Way of Jesus, I can't help but believe that it exists.

Forgive Your Brother's Bad Theology

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive someone who has incorrect theology? Up to seven times?  

Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to make sure that all of his servants were spreading correct information about him.  As he began his task of interviewing the population, a man who had been spreading rumors that the king was a heartless and uncaring dictator was brought to him.  The king ordered that all the man had be taken from him and he be put in prison for spreading untruths about the King.  

The Servant fell on his knees before the king. "Be patient with me", he begged, "and I promise I will stop spreading false rumors about you."  The servant's master took pity on him, canceled his sentence and let him go.  

But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who was telling the people that the king had six toes on his left foot.  He grabbed him and began to choke him, "Stop spreading lies about the king!" he demanded.  

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, "Be patient with me and I promise I will stop spreading false rumors about the king!"

But he refused.  Instead, he went and had the man kicked out of the village and told the people to shun him.  When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

Then the master called the servant in.  "You wicked servant," he said, "I had mercy on you because you begged me to.  Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?"  In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured each day until he had made amends to every servant in the kingdom he had wronged.  

This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive a brother or sister from your heart.  

Mt. 18:21-35 (Revised)