Exploring Love and Forgiveness with Reverend Debbie Gara

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks. I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome, Debbie. Debbie is a reverend with United Methodist Church. She has been serving for 29 years. Debbie is also one of my favorite humans on the planet. She is my cousin and our lives have been intertwined since we were babies. I am so happy that you're here. Thank you. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about where you work. I'll call it work. I'm actually officially retired in the United Methodist Church structure, but then we have this status called Actively Retired.

And I. I served part time at Laguna Beach United Methodist Church, obviously in Laguna. Beach. Yes, obviously. And is there some way we can find out more about you or do you have some videos? The Laguna Beach United Methodist Church is easily found on Facebook and we record all of our worship services, which I think are pretty wonderful. I'm sure they are. I don't preach that often because it's not part of my call. And that would be a whole nother hour. That's the best place there are going to be at United Methodist Facebook page. You had a big life before you chose to become a reverend.

What led you to wanting to take this position on It's such a big adventure. It's such a responsibility. I was in another career before I was went into ordained ministry, a career with an early childhood education. And I've always loved children, and I still do. And I was fascinated with how they learned. But I just started feeling like there was something missing in my life, something else that I needed to do. And it was a very unsettling feeling that was keeping me up at night. I had an opportunity to go into a third world immersion experience.

It happened to be Haiti, but you can find that many places in the world. But what led you to want to do that? This feeling of not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. I don't know how else to describe it. And so when the opportunity came to do that with a group of people in the church that I was attending, there was a pull to explore another part of the world and get to know another part of humanity that was different than the sheltered place where I was living, where we were living. Well, and you chose to go to someplace where people are truly struggling.

Yes. So there must have been something about that that intrigued you. I mean, you didn't choose to go to Dublin. I mean, some other which is sadly was, but. Right. A different story. There was some kind of a message inside of me that knew the way that I often describe it, since I'm a person of faith and God is a big part of my life, is I knew a small portion of God and I needed to know a much bigger portion of God because to me, God created all of humanity, all living things, not just humanity, all living creatures and life on this planet. And I only knew a small, isolated, quite wealthy, comparatively portion of God's planet.

And I needed to understand God more by going to more of God's world. So that makes sense. Yes, it does. I would say that a lot of us might feel that way, Like we're we're very well settled in our own community, with or without God. And some of us think there must be more. And you dove in, and you. That was a big leap to just head off to Haiti, where you could really see and feel this kind of struggle. And so that's what took you to wanting to take a ministry? What took me to being driven in spite of myself to have to do this is called a call. We call it the call to ministry.

Can you describe that? It sounds like it's not tangible. I was the group that I was with, visited a children's hospital in Port au Prince, which is the capital of Haiti. The children that were there, the babies mostly that were there, were mostly dying of malnourishment and tuberculosis and AIDS. This was 1989. I think that's still a lot of that is still the case, if not worse. We were able to walk around in this hospital of cribs, pick up children, and I picked up a baby who had AIDS and TB and was malnourished with the distended stomach that you see.

And I was so overcome. They also asked, orphaned mostly from AIDS, that I the only thing I knew to do was ask inside of myself, God, what do I do with this? How can I ever be happy again with the way that I feel? And I felt like I had this response of you happen to be born where you were when you were. Because by chance, this baby is born under these circumstances. But my love for this child is the same as my love for you. And so since you have what you have and you now know this, what are you going to do? Well, I had two little girls literally at home and a husband, and I wasn't going to go there to Haiti and start feeding babies.

So the only thing that I could figure out that made sense in my world and my exposure was to go to seminary and to explore being dedicated to a life of faith. What I just described is what I consider my call experience a challenge from God to do something with the feelings that I had. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. I never really understood what that phrase meant before. So do you think that all humans are presented with those sorts of opportunities, callings of some type? But a lot of us don't see that it's a calling. Dr. Bails theory would say that ultimately we all naturally help each other, that once we finally undo ourselves of the trash that we're carrying around our issues, or at least reduce the trash a little bit, that we open our hearts, that we feel love, that we're sort of more inclined to take care of each other.

I guess with my question is really me thinking that unfortunately, most of us don't hear that calling. It may be there, but we're so consumed by our own issues that we can't figure out a way or don't even consider helping others. Right. And you do this on a regular basis, big and small, at home, in your community, in your church, in other countries. When you're doing this, you do it naturally. And you, in the process of helping someone, are you feeling some kind of internal joy or is it something that happens afterwards where you think, my gosh, I, I think I changed that person's life a little bit, or does it just become part of who you are?

It becomes part of who you are because it's how we're intended to be. And I completely agree with Bernard on that. I think we may well just have different ways of describing the same thing. Yeah, I believe it's our true nature. And my language is that's the way that God created us. But it's not necessary to use that language. It's the way that humans are, is to be in community, to care for one another, to share, to help when we can help and to receive, when we need to receive that feeling of wholeness. The feeling of you said Joy comes as a result of doing that because we are discovering our true selves.

And most of the time, most human beings and myself a fair amount of time, in spite of what you the nice things you just said are wrapped up in our own worries and concerns and silly things that we let take over our lives. Right. And a lot of that is part of the human experience. Right. But it seems that we have largely over centuries in sort of lost touch with our ability to have compassion for each other, with our ability to respect and understand each other with no judgment or very little judgment. Right. Where we're so fragmented now and through this podcast, we're hoping to find ways to bring us all back together to create a whole picture.

And that's a giant project. But I think if we can talk to one human at a time and we can have these conversations, others might then carry this on and have conversations of their own. Right. And a lot of our discussions are with psychotherapists, people that follow in Dr. Bails footsteps. But there's so much outreach like you, you're fabulous. And you understand this concept of love, whatever you call it, whether it's God or Christ or love or spirit. Love is fine. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, we believe God is love. So that works really well. So I'm partially just establishing why, for me, it's so important to have you here.

Okay? Because it's not just about Bernard. It's about those of us who really appreciate just love in our world. Right. And we may be decades, centuries away from really finessing this, but I think a little bit of flavor that we can each get along the way is delightful. I mean, it feels good, feels good to come from a place of love. It feels good to help other people. Right. Exactly. So in your surroundings, with the people that you know and the people that you help, are there particular struggles that you see that are common? Are there common issues or certain areas where people have more questions than others?

Like, is there is an overtime? Perhaps is there a bigger degree of depression or less or more fear or less or more division? There's a lot of ways to answer that. But the first thing that comes to mind that I've been particularly aware of in the last few years is the amount of resentment and anger that people carry. Over for. Feeling like they've been wronged in some way or believing messages that they are lesser than all this to say. There's so many things that people are carrying around that make them think that they aren't worthy, aren't good enough, and just feelings of low self esteem in general.

And this relates because it's really hard to love when you don't love yourself. And I think in general, people don't really love themselves. I think so, too. And so the amount of love that you have is the amount of love that you can give. And there's so many ways that we that's that's established. I know that there are other ways to do this. But for me and my faith to be able to forgive, to understand what true forgiveness is, is a huge thing. So loving is a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to really understand or no. I think a lot of us think we love.

I think we are loved. But maybe that some other sort of emotion. I think that self-love comes first and there's this amount of attention we need to give to ourselves that we don't give ourselves for whatever reason. Do you feel that's true, that people don't really understand how to take care of themselves and therefore can't really take care of others? Yes, absolutely. Many people don't know how to go about learning to love themselves. I mean, there's certainly people that have lived a life filled with blessings and unconditional love and everything.

All the all of the pieces have gone together well. And they believe in themselves and they love easily. But there are many more people that just don't feel worthy. They don't they feel like they're not good enough, basically. And then they make choices based on that. Yes. Like, yes, there's this fabulous person that I want to have a relationship with, but my. Gosh, I'm not good. Enough. Great. And I'm going to figure out a way to to stop this relationship, even though I'm attracted to that person. Right. I'm not good enough for that person. Or if I show them who I really am, they probably won't love me.

So I need to have a way of pretending or trying to be who I want to be, but they're not really. Or who they want me to be. Yeah, so they're not really sharing deeply. They're just more surface. And that's a big thing. I think a huge thing that that happens so often. You see this perfect scenario. You know, Mom and dad think that this relationship that you're about to enter into is perfect. And maybe you're not quite getting it or you see it on the surface, but somehow you're not feeling it deep inside. But everybody thinks it's great, so you're going to mold yourself to be that person that that person can see themselves with, right?

And you dive in and you get in this relationship and you discover that you your last year alone, you you can't be your real self or you've even lost your real self. And I think so many of us get on that path. I think. So. And we're not living our real life and right as far as I know, we only have one go around. Maybe there's more. But to not be able to live our real life, to be our true selves, is such a shame. It is. And life is so grand and so fabulous. If you can figure out how to be your own person, your own unique person. Right. And that's the way we're going to contribute to humanity, is just by each of us being our best individual, right.

We need people like you to help us know that we're lovable because every human is lovable. And you had that fantastic experience with that baby that, my gosh, that just showed you that there's just this river of love that flows between us. I live for experiences like that. You can say you don't want to talk about this, but when you were growing up with your mom and dad, you had a different experience than I had with my parents. Did you always feel like you were in a safe place, that you were loved? Did you feel like you or did you grow up and realize that there was a you you had been hiding in order to keep your safe place in your family?

I felt like me. I felt loved. I felt safe. I knew how much I was loved. That has a lot to do with who I am. We were just talking about people that fall into more outside pressure than how they really feel inside to move into things like relationships that aren't really true love. I had a relationship for several years. I had a boyfriend when I was young, and the expectation was that we would get married and that was the expectation from others. And there were a lot of convenient things about it. And I recognized almost suddenly, except that we'd been on a long trip together, so that there'd been a more intense getting to know each other, that I couldn't marry him.

And it was a very significant choice for me because it was very difficult to end that relationship. And I cared about him deeply as a person. I just didn't love him in that way anymore. And I see many people that wouldn't have had the strength to stop that and to have the kind of hurt that was involved in that breakup. And they would have just done the safe thing without a major change. So and move forward. And so then it would have been a divorce or it would have been a sad marriage. Yes. And I've often wondered, what is it that gave me this strength because I was still quite young.

Yeah. To do that. And it had to do with how I believed in and loved myself, to recognize what the love with another person needed to be and to recognize that that wasn't going to happen with that person. And you were worthy of more than that. Yes. And where did that happen? Because this was well before my call to ministry and lots of faith practices that I put into place and so forth. It was kind of a first love relationship. I think that happened out of the really quality childhood that I had and the and the love that I recognized in my parents and so forth.

Is that all make sense? it. Does. So when you say the love that you recognized in your parents, the love that you saw they had for you or for each other? Both. A lot of the love that they had for me had to do with the love that they had for each other. That makes sense. And that's kind of what we're talking about, right? Yeah, That whole cyclical thing. Because you can't leave your children in a healthy way if you're not loving each other. No matter what kind of relationship or partnership or anything. Yes. And you can't instill love in your child if you don't know how to love yourself.

Right. This child somehow has to understand that you absolutely love them no matter what. I mean, we all be telling our children, I love you more than anything. You can come to me. I'm going to give you any direction that you need or ask for from a place of love. Only from a place of love. There are so many children who I'm just learning proper terminology, but I think Neurodivergent is a good blanket term for autism spectrum. Learning disabilities, just all kinds of things. And that's not even talking about physical disabilities that make children that don't fit the norm.

And there's a tremendous amount of persons trying to raise those children that are not helping, but hindering them from becoming their true beautiful selves. That's a huge. Topic. That's a huge topic, and maybe it's not related, but I think that part of what we're talking about in the fulfillment of true love in the world has to do with finding a deep relationship with persons who are much different than ourselves and finding true love in that realm as well. And we're missing out on a. Lot of that. We are. And there's so much to be even beyond love, just to learn and appreciate and enjoy.

When we look at people who are unlike us. Yes. And I mean, that's kind of what the human experience is about, really. It's it actually really does relate. It does. Because. Because we when we're talking about love, I think maybe we tend to think of it kind of loving people like us, loving people that it's easy to love, loving people that we choose. How do we do that? But it's much bigger than that. It's how do we love everyone, including those who are unlovable? Yeah. And how do we undo thinking about people in those terms? Exactly. That's a big deal.

It's it. That's something I'm really working on right now. I think if we really dig deep inside of ourselves, we realize that we still have judgments and assumptions and exclusive feelings that can be expanded greatly. So, for example. I have my youngest grandchild is five and a half, and he's on the autism spectrum. And there's probably other things, too. Labels are just so tricky. But so when you label that person in that way, does that dismiss the other things that they might be in a lot of our minds? Right. I think there's a lot of potential in my relationship with him to show him how beautiful he is, just exactly the way he is.

And I think that he's constantly getting messages because that's just the nature of life and school that he's not. Right. So I am contemplating and my language talking with God a lot about what does it look like to love him in such a way that he can at least know from me that he is extremely worthy and capable and has much to offer life and has much love to give just exactly the way he is. And do you see him responding to that? I see him responding to that in the way that he seems to love me back. But he's only five, so I don't know what he's going to say later on.

And then to take it further, everything I just said was all about me giving to him and to make this truly deep love. And I think the kind of love that Bernard talked about, it's how can I help him discover the love that he has to give to me? How can I receive from him? Think about how you feel when someone lets you know how much they need you. I want him to know that he is needed. That I need him. I want him to receive that message from me. That's tough. I mean, it's. It's. You're right. When you said Think about how it feels when someone needs.

You, when you play a valuable role in someone's life, when you're important to them and valued. It. Touches, I think, your heart deeply. Again, it. It runs to this river. I think that connects us all. It almost becomes something tangible in a way. It's. And then you want more of that. And it's it's so nice then to feel like you've given love and and now that person has a safe space to give love back. They know that they're not going to be rejected. And then there's this sort of give and take, this camaraderie, this shared experience, this helpfulness.

It's pretty terrific. There's a song it's that just touches me all the time. It's like I'm not going to sing because you would just. I'm the same way. I want you more than need you. And I need you for all time. I love that. Yeah. It's as if want and need are love and give and take. And that I get something from you when you love me is such a luscious feeling. And that I get something when I love you is also a lesson. And I just. I just am so sad that that can't be more of a reality for all of us. We were talking earlier about how, you know, when someone's being genuine, because a lot of people know how to go through emotions.

I mean, we do it all the time. Right? We're polite all the time. We don't really mean it. I know. So true. Well, and we were, too. I was asking you, how do you know when someone who's talking to you is being genuine? Because you're this reverend, You're this person we respect and we think, she's going to know that I'm a sinner. Or she's going to know that I smoked a cigaret yesterday and I'm a bad person. Not really. But how do you how do you see the real person and how do we present our real selves? There's been several times in my ministry journey when I questioned my worthiness of my title and wondered if I just knew what I needed to do and say, or whether my true heart and love were into it.

I think it's healthy for us to go through times of doubt and times of questioning throughout life. Yeah. Because then it makes causes as hopefully to explore deeper into why we're doing what we're doing or whether we need to make a change. Right. We're never finished. We're only improving, we hope. So I went through that several times and had deep conversations with God about whether my calling was still valid and true and whether I could truly invest myself deeply in what I was doing or whether it was more just an act. And so I'm saying this because I think at least the response I get, people recognize that I'm not just acting with them, that I truly I mean, I will go make a hospital visit when I'm tired and it's the last thing I want to be doing, but I'm able to still move into that space of this is more important than all those things.

You know what I mean? I do. And you do do that well. And then it never, ever fails when I have a visit or a conversation with the person that I feel like I can be helpful for who's in need, that it fills me as well. It does? Yeah. And that fulfillment that you have when you leave that scenario, whatever it was, and you go back to your life, does that stay with you? It becomes part of you. Does it satisfy you for the day? I mean, it's this fabulous way to fill oneself with a great feeling. It's it's not that you went out and bought a new pair of shoes.

You didn't go eat your favorite olives. You didn't get your hair done. You did something for someone else. And it's likely more satisfying, more fulfilling than those things because they never quite get you there. Yes, I've entered into a space that I know is right and good and love. With. That said, when you give yourself like that, it's draining. Particularly with needy people that we have to pay attention to that suck it out of us. And we all know people like that. And so I don't always go back fulfilled. I sometimes go back. I see. With a headache.

And you know that I've taken up ceramics and lately it's my space where I can get away from everything and enter into a creative world. And I bring this up because leaving can be hard and it can be draining. And part of loving ourselves is to do things that we love that don't have anything to do with loving someone else. Yes, that's. Just part of the balance that makes it all work. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, and you've really, I think, attended to that well and lately and you I mean, you've discovered that there's this great amount of satisfaction and joy that you can have in this experience.

It's totally your own right, other people doing it, but you're not there to satisfy anybody but you. Yes. And I don't think a lot of us allowed that. Yes. You know, we go through the motions perhaps. Well, and part of it is everyone's so busy that the last thing we do is do things for themselves. And so it helps to be old and retired. Right. I think a lot of us stay busy because that keeps us away from having to deal with ourselves. You know, even when you're it's true. When you're working on your potter's wheel, you're still with you, you know, And so you have to contend with you and being busy or working is totally satisfying.

Not totally, but it's on some level really satisfying. And it keeps you from having to deal with the riffraff. And you're right in your being. Yeah. And it's that riff raff that we really need to have a look at. Right? Allows you to keep denying the things that you really should attend to, to have a healthier life, much which have to do with relationships. Because we're pretty much about relationships. And I think our our time alone in a way, is is designed to help us, if we use it correctly, be better at interacting with other people. Because we're filling ourselves.

Yes. I mean, this is ideally right. And to that, because we're talking about this sort of ideal world, all of us have this burden. Almost all of us. Some of us are lucky enough not to be very burdened. But how do you see people unburdening themselves in a healthy way? Those people that you know, those people that you affect? Well, I started talking about forgiveness is one way. Forgiving oneself both. I can't talk about forgiveness without talking about it from my faith perspective. But I think it's language that can translate in the New Testament.

The way that the word is used and highly misunderstood means release because the Bible was the scriptures were written in original language, and I think it was Hebrew. Are you speaking about the word forgiveness? Yes. The original meaning, which is important to know because of all the translations, was to release then to love generously. And to me, forgiveness can be a true miracle because it turns you from having anger and resentment and feeling like you've been a victim to loving generously. And that sounds crazy, but I think there are miracles in the world.

And this can be one of them. So you believe in this power outside of your cells because our humanness is very can be very limited in how much all these things we're talking about. And so we need to get assistance, we need to go back. I think maybe Bernard would say, or another way of explaining is to go back to that true love that we are intended to be and get rid of all of that other stuff, a lot of which is can be anger legitimately because we've had harm done going, but recognizing that this harm that has done this thing that is causing us to not be able to be our full selves is interfering with us, with our true intended humanity.

The deep prayer, the deep yearning, the mantra, whatever you want to call it, is release this from me. This from me. Maybe it's a person. Maybe it could be any number of things for me. A few miracle times in my life when it has worked well, it's when I've been so upset that I feel like I've. I've opened a deeper place, and I'm begging God to. To enter that and to save me to to help me. And then it's like it happens. And is there. A way that you can describe an experience like that, Something that. Yeah, you don't have to give me the specifics, but something that happened where you were so full of angst.

Or I was so full of anger towards a coworker. This was before ministry who had accidentally erased cassette tape. That was very precious to me. And these were before digital music when this was one thing that was made. No way to retrieve it. Only one in existence. And it was very sentimental to me because it had involved music that we had used at our wedding in my first wedding. And I kind of had a not so great relationship with her anyway. And so that didn't help any with my anger towards her for doing this to me. I knew that I needed to figure out a way to deal with it, to continue to work with her, and to be the person that I knew I needed to be, that I couldn't stay in that anger.

And I just remember I was on my bed, I was alone at home and I was crying and pleading with God to take this away. I didn't know what else to say except take this away from me. The way that I'm feeling. Everything. And I'm telling you this is exactly how it happened. I just suddenly felt different and it was like there was this list in front of me of exactly what I needed to do, and it was to write her a note and tell her that I forgave her. And no object is ever more important than a relationship to go out and find something close to what had been lost so that I could give her.

That's the giving generously part that comes after the forgiveness. It's the true love part that goes along with it. And then I was excited and I went about those tasks and I gave her the note and couldn't wait for her to receive it. And the miracle part is, I didn't care about the tape anymore, which is just super crazy. That is. But it happened just exactly like this. That's amazing. And so I left it on her counter. We were teachers and she came to me in tears, holding it and gave me this hug and said, You have no idea. You have no idea. my gosh.

From then our relationship was completely different. What a gift. Yeah. It's like, why doesn't it happen like that more often? I know, but. Because it happened, I believe in it. And it happens in small ways. I think most of us don't know that we can ask for help that way. I see. I think the point is, when we're at our deepest, I think that if we open ourselves and allow ourselves to feel the deepest sorrow, which is what I was doing and. Truly. With our deepest selves, want it to be filled with love. Instead of that, it can happen. Whether it's whatever the power sources.

It doesn't happen partially because we don't have the capacity to deal with that sadness, depression, anxiety. We don't know. We don't allow ourselves, we don't. And and so we just keep pushing it aside. But that just adds to this pile of trash. And we actually have to face get into the sadness, the depression before you can unload it. We open a deep hole. Well, this is how I describe grief and tears when we deal with it. A lot of people don't deal with. But when we allow ourselves to, then we are open to a deeper space in ourselves that can be filled with a deeper love.

Yeah. And I think that's a scary concept because I think a lot of us think, well, this is the way I am. If I take care of this thing, what goes in that space right? It's I may have this bit of me that's depression or this sadness, but it's me. I'm comfortable with that. It's not my favorite. It doesn't make me happy, but it is who I am. What happens there? I think that's a big, scary thing. And I would love for people to know that that space is then filled with goodness. You know, they love whatever you want to call it, that there's there's something wonderful and warm that comes from releasing yourself from this pain.

Right. But we have to believe it. I know. Yeah. And so what you're what you've experienced, where you just prayed or asked God for this assistance, and that was just so easy. I pleaded. So it wasn't easy. But you had the strength to do that. A lot of us would say, Well, that's silly or impossible or can't happen. And what if it does? I'm not going there. Right? And we we're so writers. We want to just make sure that that person knows that they really, really hurt us by destroying that tape. Well, that's the way that most of the world operates.

Yeah, that's why we are where we are. So much. War and war. And crazy drivers. Yeah, that's right. That's taking it really close to home. But if you imagine the crazy drivers and sort of translate that into a bigger picture. That's our world. Yeah. And it's. Scary. That is. Which is all the more reason to love hard because all we have control over really is those in our circle and how we are with them and the influence that we have in our circles. And I think that each of us as individuals, if we can recognize that and just find the joy and ease in supporting those around us, that we will actually have sort of a ripple effect where we can take that into other communities via those people.

But now feeling confident or even sort of jumping over that to the next group of people. Right. And that's how humanity. Can exactly. Care. Take care, give. Yep. So we have to finish now. This has been so great. I would love for you to just take to heart what shared with us and think about it and please come back again. We'd love to hear what you think about this. Thank you. Thank you.