We love poorly, thus forgiveness

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

                                                                        Henri J.M. Nouwen

“how [does] ‘the other person’ feels... How their hurt must be as intense as ours and that they, too, have a side to the story. I need help accepting the fact that they may hurt just as bad, or worse than I do.

                                                                        Dancing Faith reader

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Forgiveness is

not easy

never, ever, easy

not if the hurt, the injury is real

forgiveness is not minimizing

nor it is condescending

a failure to take either the injury

or the person who inflicted it seriously

is a failure to truly forgive

I have found that forgiveness must begin

with my taking the difficult journey through my own need to be forgiven

If I cannot see my own need for forgiveness,

and call upon my own experience of forgiveness,

I will find it very difficult to forgive

Forgiveness must start with my own profound awareness of my own

humanity and fallibility

if I forget that first step, I will never be able to do the other thing I also find necessary

I will never be able to put myself behind the other person’s eyes

I find there is often only one question that helps me forgive

In what kind of place would I have to be, myself, to act the way that person acted toward me?

(or toward one I care about)

What kind of pain, or hurt, or fury would have to be there?

What emptiness, or despair?

This is not an exercise in acceptance

It is merely an exercise in understanding

and although, often

I may never really understand

in the very seeking to understand

I bind myself to the other

In a different way

in a new way

and it is in that bond

of common pain

that I find some capacity

to forgive

or at the very least

find it within my soul

to earnestly desire to forgive

I find Nowen’s quote to be the most powerful statement on forgiveness that I have ever found

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

Forgiveness as the great act of love,

among the fellowship of the weak!

Ah, yes

Oddly, as I began to think about this topic, an article showed up on my Facebook page.  It contained and excerpt from an article written by Terri Roberts, the mother of the young man who shot 10 young Amish girls in a small country school, killing 5 of them.

I would be remiss if I did not share this passage from that article, for I think it profoundly humbling, and inspiring (see link below for the Facebook post).

“After my son's service, at the grave site, the media jostled to take pictures. All at once, at least 30 Amish emerged from behind a shed, the men in their tall, wide-brimmed hats, the women in white bonnets. The group fanned out into a crescent between the grave site and the photographers, their backs offering a solid wall of black to the cameras. They did this to show compassion for the family of the man who had taken so much from them.

Fresh anger shook me then. I could think only of the terrible wrong Charlie had done. At that moment I was not sure that I could ever forgive the unspeakable evil he'd perpetrated on these young parents, his own children, our family. Yet neither could I stop loving Charlie. He was my son.

I held on to my composure as our Amish guests stepped forward to express their condolences. Among the first to approach us were Chris and Rachel Miller, whose daughters, Lena and Mary Liz, had died in their arms. Murmuring a greeting to Chuck and me, they added softly, "We are so sorry for your loss."

Sorry for our loss. I could barely choke out a response. Our son had taken the lives of their daughters. And here they were comforting us!”

How does one move from anger and hate, toward one who has done such a grievous harm, to such compassion?

I have, perhaps poorly, tried to explain the path I trod in my often pitiful attempts.

I am doubtful that I have provided any answers, but perchance I have planted some seeds of hope,

and who knows,

perhaps forgiveness

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http://www.womansday.com/life/inspira