Extraordinary Forgiveness

Princess Tia of Egypt was born into a proud family of Grand Pharaohs. Their status was mighty across the desert sands of the East. They garnered trust through their strength, courage, and a slight drop of fear. Princess Tia was aware of this even in her crib. During her first birthday, still suckling at her mother's breast, Tia saw with open eyes the joy that her father beamed when he boasted of the size of the crowds in the village, and how they grew in numbers as he promised just a hint of gold in exchange for a life of sweat. He would sweeten the deal with promises of succulent lambkin at the planetary feasts, offering just enough so that the juices would flow in their palettes. The Pharaoh would later rejoice about the broad spectrum of support from the local villagers, proud of his decorum and strength as the root of their love for him. Princess Tia could see he was lying to himself.

3,300 years later, a green-eyed, curly, black-haired daughter of a local judge was sitting under an ancient tree with wild roots, ready to start her new journey. She was gifted with time. She had no need to begin a career, no need to start her higher education. Her mother, the judge, was a great believer in personal experience, and granted Amira permission to spend a year travelling, exploring the world and discovering herself before deciding her future. Her mother's wisest advice was to turn within. "Be quiet enough so you can hear," she would say. "Hear what?", Amira would ask her mother. "Be still, my love," she would reply. "All the answers lie within."

Amira's father was not happy with her choice of destination. In fact he was not happy with his wife's permission in diverting their daughter from the societal path of school, law school, and job. ‘How dare they collaborate behind his back,’ he thought. ‘Wasn't this a time for embracing women's rights? Their right to be lawyers? Their right to work?’

Amira opened up her new journal, it had a soft, moleskin cover, and rich cream sleeves of paper, so thick it could have been papyrus. "Go within," she pondered, running her hands across the pages, feeling their texture. 'I don't even know what question to ask,’ she thought. But as she took the lid off her pen, without even thinking, her hands wrote some words. "How can I forgive my father?".

When Princess Tia was three moons from coming of age, she had felt a flood of fear one night as a moonlit desert storm whipped through the palace rooms. She looked across the wind into the sky, searching for her birth stars, seeking comfort in the light of their path. Clouds were storming past the moon, and there was no consistency to the light. Her thoughts began to scramble in imitation of the speed of the wind, and she suddenly startled herself with one particular fear. What if she continued on this path of self-sacrifice? What if she continued to cower down to her father and her brothers, the Pharaohs of the land, and let them rule from a place of fear? Not only would this fear burn through the centuries across a millennium of moons, but in this lifetime, they would find her a husband with equal credence and ego status, and she would end up sacrificing herself for his pride. Her children would be born into a world of secrets, a land of lies and deception, and it would be too late for her to deliver them from their beds.

The fear was enough to petrify her into deciding enough was enough. No longer could she silence herself. No longer could she conceive of always agreeing with her father so he could avoid his own pain, no longer could she put her uncle's desires to gain more and more credence, her brothers' willpower to conquer more and more horizons ahead of her own beliefs. She must speak from her heart. She must find a way to say her truth out loud.

The next morning, she enlisted the help of her dear lady-in-waiting, and they obtained the godly gift of papyrus. With the help of the Official Governor of the hills surrounding the valleys of the East, Princess Tia began to record her deepest desires of her heart onto the sacred paper. Every night she sat in deep silence under the moon, waiting to hear a message of peace. ‘How quickly the people had clouded their vision of truth,’ she heard, ‘how blind they had become to the love that lay on this land, how much fear had shadowed the innocence of eternity, how falsely they saw everything as so separate from God’. She knew she only had three moons to get this message right, before they sought her a husband, and it was only her unconditional stillness that allowed her to hear the messages so swiftly and clearly.

When the very last sheath of papyrus was scripted, and the Official Governor put his drawing reed down, something changed in Egypt forever. There was a planetary shift. Princess Tia fell into a deep sleep for the rest of the day and that entire night, and when the first sun rays rose through the river reeds that morning, Princess Tia had shapeshifted into an immortal living Goddess.

It was as though she had grown ever so slightly taller, ever so slightly higher than her loved ones. Her whole body had softened into this ethereal grace. Some citizens thought she had become a woman, become of age, and had simply entered into the beauty of maidenhood. But those wiser, the nobles of the land, knew without a shadow of a doubt this Princess was no longer a mere mortal soul.

Amira woke up with the dappled sun in her eyes. She must have drifted off into a doze, she thought, as she roused herself from her sleep and shook her upper body as if to shake the slumber from her. She looked back at her page. ‘Where had those words come from?’, she wondered. Perhaps there was magic in the act of writing. Or perhaps it was the pen. Or perhaps there was something alchemical in the existence of her new, virginal black book.

Still in her daze, for a moment she was frustrated that she wasn’t yet confident how to journal in her special book. Perhaps she should just write with no expectation. Amira thought it too naive of herself to write “Dear diary”; the concept that her diary could be personified and actually listen to her was far too childlike for her eighteen-year-old brain. So she decided to write to her own higher self, her most wise self. It might offer her a depth of space between these fresh pages. “Dear Amira”, she wrote. As she wrote her name, Amira began to daydream about why her parents had named her Amira. She had looked up the definition one day, and it meant Princess.

The Official Governor of the East was dumbfounded by the Oracle he held in his hand. He had laid a supple soft piece of animal skin over the papyrus and wrapped it around to keep the precious words safe, but it held such a powerful energy he was scared of even opening it. He knew he had a job to interpret its message to the administrators of the land and the peoples. And he knew he was given this task by the noblesse. It was his time to rise in nobleness. But he needed a guide. A leader.

That morning, after Princess Tia rose, the first words she spoke had such depth of presence they vibrated throughout the land.

Today was the day that she came of age. But she had not a speck of fear in her heart. Hey eyes blinked open slowly as she heard her father the Pharaoh hurdle through the palace corridors into her bedroom chamber. He had a grand smile on his face, ready to deliver his daughter into the hands of her future husband. As he moved aside the linen veils that kept the evening mosquitoes from his Princess, she looked into his eyes and reached out to hold his chin in her hands with feminine grace. “I see only God in you, father,” she said.

The Grand Pharaoh blinked and something sort of softened deep behind his eyes. For an instant he forgot who he was. But he blinked again and remembered where he was. “Are you ready to meet your future husband, dear Tia?”, he asked, holding her hands in his.

“Father, I hear only God’s voice when you speak.” The words she spoke went straight into his heart. He didn’t understand the magic that was happening, but his whole body felt like it was being forgiven, he no longer felt threatened, and all his limbs relaxed. A gentleness came into his smile, and perhaps for the very first time, he felt only love in his own eyes.

In that instance he realised how wise the Princess had become, he felt no doubt about the depth of love she had for him, it poured out of her cells, and he realised that he could trust her implicitly to make her own decision about her future King. Maybe even one day, she might choose to be Queen.

Amira looked up through the tree branches and realised she had been daydreaming again. A movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned to see a young man who looked in turmoil. His face was taut and he looked frozen sitting on some stone steps. She felt drawn to him, and went over to ask if he was OK. He wasn’t sure, he told her.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”, she asked the man. He had an air of kindness about him but looked quite distressed.

“I’m not sure”, he said again. “My father is in hospital, dying, and I need to forgive him before he passes, but I don’t know how.”

Amira looked down at the floor, and then looked away, noting the coincidence of the questioning they were both facing. When she looked back at him, her voice spoke automatically, without any thought.

“Are you so sure you need to forgive him?”, she asked.

He blinked his eyes and looked back at her, perplexed.

She continued. “Often we judge people for not being how we want them to be, when this is simply an opportunity for us to forgive ourselves for needing them to give out love when they are in a state of calling out for love.

Can you simply love him, instead?”

The man looked back at her, with tears filling his eyes. He had never felt in such a state of grace. That was the very moment he forgave. His body swelled with such pure intense spirit, he could hardly breathe. He didn’t know how to express his gratitude, what blessing had just been bestowed on him, so he did the only thing he knew how. He reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet, and took out a heavy, solid gold coin. “This piece is worth it’s weight in gold”, he said. “The local goldsmith will be able to help convert it for you". And with that, before Amira could refuse the gift, the kind gentleman disappeared from the old palace grounds.

Amira looked down at the book she realised she was still holding open in her left-hand. How strange it was that she had such clarity of speech after simply writing out one question. Words were more than a refuge. They had the power to heal, she realised. She closed the pages, and walked to the local goldsmith opposite the park. The goldsmith smiled when she placed the coin on his counter. “My”, he said, “what serenity you must have spoken to earn a coin worth $20,000,” he pronounced.