Good Morning,
The New Year has arrived and I had been wondering about what I
might want to do in the coming year. This was not quite in the realm of New
Year’s resolutions, but something more akin to deciding what to work on in 2015.
Inspiration arrived while reading Anne Lamott’s latest book, Small Victories: Spotting
Improbable Moments of Grace. Each
chapter deals with a different subject. On the evening of the second day of the
year, I read the chapter entitled Forgiven. This was not new ground for me. I
have read quite a bit on the subject of forgiveness and have given it a great
deal of thought over the years. There is a strange phenomenon that sometimes
occurs when we read or hear something that had been presented before. For some
reason, the content takes hold in a different way and it is processed as though
it is new. This was the case with Lamott’s thoughts on forgiveness.
One of the things she said in this chapter, was that it might make
sense to begin first with the little things we want to forgive. She quoted C.S.
Lewis’ book, Mere
Christianity, where he wrote
“If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with
something easier than the Gestapo.” It was delivered with humor and sheer
brilliance. Lamott said that not forgiving it is “like drinking rat poison and
then waiting for the rat to die”. She had provided the inspiration and
now it was time for me to run with it. How, then, do we negotiate the troubled
waters of forgiveness?
I decided that my mission in the New Year is this: to, one by one,
work on shifting my thinking toward the healing of old complaints. I chuckled
as the thought crossed my mind to call it, ‘My Forgiveness Project of 2015’. I
was aware of the reconciliation work being done in South Africa and the heroic
efforts of Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and others, to bring truth and
reconciliation to the people there. I felt sure that someone had used the term
The Forgiveness Project before, so I did an Internet search. I discovered a
program called The Forgiveness Project, which was started by a journalist in
the U. K. named Marina Cantacuzino. They have done a You Tube series of 10
panel discussions on various subjects related to forgiveness. They are doing
remarkable work with victims and perpetrators. Victims of war crimes, acts of
terrorism, or other crimes of violence, have been brought together with their
perpetrators to promote healing. The You Tube discussions cover subjects such
as: Can forgiveness repair communities? Can radical compassion win the war
against violent extremism? Do you need God to forgive? Does knowing
a person’s story make it harder to hate them? How do we deal with unresolved
pain and trauma?
Recurring themes in the videos are those of trauma and
dehumanization, communication and mutual forgiveness, and strategies for
healing. My petty complaints are a speck of sand on the beach compared to those
of these heroic individuals. Does the time we felt betrayed by a friend or
colleague really count? Do our unresolved disputes with neighbors make a
difference? Small and petty as these seem, I believe that this is precisely where
we need to begin. What we harbor serves as a destructive force, no matter how
small. These small conflicts build up and gather momentum over the course of a
lifetime. Our accumulated unforgiven complaints, result in an avalanche that
smothers us all. No corner of the globe is unaffected.
If you want to learn more about the The Forgiveness Project, go to
You Tube and listen to The Forgiveness Project videos. In addition to the
videos mentioned earlier here, you will find personal stories of trauma and
healing. Their mission of working toward conflict resolution, reconciliation,
and victim support will be evident.
The posting on the first of January was on the necessity for hope
in order for the human race to move forward. The work being done by The
Forgiveness Project serves as a hopeful reminder that change is possible.
