The Spiritualilty of Forgiveness, Part 2
A monastic conference published in The Oblate in three parts.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Other Experiences of Forgiveness
In recent years many therapists and other professions
who don't necessarily operate from a faith perspective,
are encouraging forgiveness.
However, the scientific study of forgiveness began only recently.
Before 1985, one could find only five investigations of forgiveness.
In the years since, more than fifty-five studies have been conducted
to study forgiveness and go help people to learn how to forgive. 2
Part of this is surely the experienced limits
of dealing with the fallout from really nasty divorces;
in working with people who have been sexually traumatized;
in counseling those who have experienced the loss of loved ones
through accidents, random gunfire,
or other violent acts which are so common in our culture.
Part of it is due to the efforts of peacemakers in places like Northern Ireland, or in South Africa, where forgiveness is seen as the only genuine path to long-term conflict resolution and reconciliation.
In his book No Future Without Forgiveness, 3
Desmond Tutu speaks of the African notion of ubuntu.
The word speaks the very essence of being human.
It describes a person who is hospitable, friendly,
Caring and compassionate.
A person who is ubuntu shares what he has as if to say,
"my humanity is caught up,
is inextricably bound up in yours."
We are a bundle of life.
A person is a person through other persons.
It is not, "I think, therefore I am."
It says rather, "I am human because I belong.
I participate, I share."
A person with ubuntu
is open and available to others, affirming of others,
does not feel threatened when others are able and good.
If others are good, he or she is built up:
If others are tortured or humiliated or diminished,
he or she is diminished.
What dehumanizes you inevitably dehumanizes me.
What builds you up, builds me up. (p.31, No Future without Forgiveness)
Nelson Mandela and Tutu were instrumental in establishing
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This commission was charged with establishing the truth
of what actually happened under apartheid.
A fundamental part of forgiveness and reconciliation
is establishing the story of the harm that has been done.
Daily reports revealed to the country the reality that had long been denied.
Ubuntu is that sense of relationship, of interconnection, and respect
that provides the spiritual energy to seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
Ubuntu is a helpful way to describe the sense of relationship that
is key to healthy community living.
It would be impossible to overstate
the importance of forgiveness in community living.
Without forgiveness, community life can become a living hell.
To ask a community member for forgiveness can be difficult.
With forgiveness some of the thorniest problems
can often be resolved with three simple words: I am sorry.
To ask for forgiveness requires humility
and the acknowledgment of weakness and failures.
Clearly, there has to be a certain level of trust.
And yet it is just this that makes a community healthy —
living in mutual humility, fully aware of our interdependence.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that we must "live together in the forgiveness of sins,"
because without forgiveness no human fellowship can survive.
Pope John Paul II forgave the man who attempted to assassinate him.
Cardinal Bernadin forgave the young man
who falsely accused him of sexually abusing him in the seminary.
These were not merely symbolic acts of public officials
but heartfelt attempts to live the fullness of the Gospel,
to follow the example of Christ on the cross when he said,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The following narratives
have been taken from a book entitled
Seventy Times Seven: The Power of Forgiveness 4 by Johann Christoff Arnold.
He has collected a range of personal testimony
from a variety of different human situations.
I have tried to choose a diverse set of experiences,
as a narrative approach to forgiveness.
There is a woman named Mary
who overcame painful memories of abuse.
She writes: "My mother died at the age of forty-two,
leaving behind my father and eight children, ages one through nineteen.
The loss was devastating for our family
and my father broke down emotionally just when we needed him most.
He tried to molest my sister and me,
and so I began to resent his presence and hate him.
He then moved away.
I went off to school in Europe
and I didn't see him for another seven years.
But I held on to my hatred and it grew inside me.
Later I returned home where I became engaged to a childhood friend.
At this point, my father asked me to meet with him,
but I refused.
No way did I want to meet him.
My fiancé insisted.
He said that I could not refuse such a meeting
and I had to respond to his longing for reconciliation.
It cost me a real battle, but in the end I agreed
and we knelt down in prayer to ask for God's help.
Peace came into my heart.
We met my father in a cafe
and before I had said anything he turned to me,
broken, and asked for forgiveness.
I was deeply moved,
and I realized that to hold on to my hatred any longer would be a sin.
I also saw that my anger had closed the door to God
and his forgiveness and love in my life.
Child abuse is the most difficult thing to forgive.
The victim — the child — is innocent,
whereas the perpetrator, the adult, is at fault.
Sadly many victims mistakenly believe that somehow they are at fault,
that they deserved the abuse.
For them, forgiving seems to imply that this is indeed the case.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Forgiveness is necessary because both victim
and victimizer are prisoners to a shared darkness
and both will remain bound in this darkness until someone opens the door.
Forgiveness is the only way out,
and even if our adversary chooses to remain in the darkness,
that should not hold us back.
If we leave the door open for him or her,
that person may even follow us into the light.
A dad writes about his son Michael
who was killed instantly one evening in a car crash.
His best friend who was in the back seat was also killed.
The driver, who had been drinking heavily,
and was speeding recklessly, received minor injuries.
The driver was subsequently charged with two counts of vehicular homicide.
He was sentenced and the dad believes that he will finally have peace.
He writes, "Somehow I was seduced into the belief
that things would be different after the driver was sentenced
and was brought to justice.
I think that this is what people mean when they talk about 'closure.'
We think that if there is someone to blame,
then we can put the matter to rest.
I was angry at the driver, of course.
But I was angry at Michael, too.
After all, he had made some really bad decisions that night;
he had put his life in jeopardy.
I had to go through this anger in order to come to grips with my feelings.
So no peace. It was some months later that it hit me.
Until I forgave the driver,
I would not get the closure I was looking for.
Forgiving is different from removing responsibility.
The driver was still responsible for Michael's death.
But I had to forgive him before I could let go.
No amount of punishment could ever bring Michael back.
And this process of forgiving the driver did not really involve the driver —
it involved me. I had to change, no matter what he did.
The road to forgiveness was long and painful.
I had to forgive more than just the driver.
I had to forgive Michael, and God, for allowing it to happen.
And myself.
Ultimately, it was my inability to forgive myself that was most difficult.
There were many times in my own life
when I had driven Michael to places
when I myself was under the influence of alcohol.
But that was the key to forgiveness — to forgive myself.
This is what I learned —
that the closure we seek comes in forgiving.
And this closure is really up to us,
because the power to forgive lies not outside us,
but within our own souls.
Sometimes we can think forgiveness in terms of a one-to-one relationship.
But what of those instances
when an entire class of people, Jews, blacks, Native Americans, or women
have been relentlessly blocked from achieving their full potential,
or systematically oppressed, or systematically killed?
One author sums up the dilemma this way:
"In my mind, I cannot ever imagine asking the oppressed —
whether Jews, Native Americans, or any other persecuted peoples throughout history —
to forgive their oppressors. Who can dare?"
And yet there are individual human beings
who have found it necessary to forgive their oppressors,
in order to move on with their own lives.
A young Jewish woman and her family
managed to emigrate from Nazi Germany in the late 1930's.
Her father died at the untimely age of forty-two
and she lost grandparents on both sides
and childhood friends in the Holocaust.
She spoke of her long struggle with bitterness
and her continued unwillingness to forgive:
"I sat down trembling,
and as I did it dawned on me
that if I looked into my own heart I could find the seeds of hatred there, too.
I realized that they are there in every human being.
Arrogant thoughts, feelings of irritation toward others,
coldness, anger, envy, even indifference —
these are the roots of what happened in Nazi Germany.
I recognized more clearly than ever before
that I myself stood in desperate need of God's forgiveness,
and finally I felt myself free."
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
September, 2002
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