Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation on the theme of forgiveness.
My hope is that it will help all of us to live lives of peace and greater happiness.
An opening thought.
May the light of each new day remind us of the light that is within each one of us.
May the light of each new day throw light on the places where we have fallen short of our ideals.
May it bring light to places where we are in need of forgiveness.
And remembering how frequently we ourselves have been in need of forgiveness.
May the light of each new day inspire us to be kinder to anyone and everyone who needs forgiveness from us.
And now on to the theme of this meditation.
Forgiveness.
The grace of forgiveness.
Kim had every reason to hate.
She had every excuse not to forgive.
Her photograph appeared on newspapers across the world.
Because Kim was one of the children seen running down the street in Vietnam after her village was bombed with napalm.
Anyone who has seen this photograph will never forget it.
It's one of the awful defining images of the Vietnam War.
We ask ourselves how could the innocent victim of such an atrocity ever forgive?
But forgive she did.
Kim has forgiven the man who planned the attack that killed many of her friends and family.
Not only that but she has established the Kim Foundation International.
Her foundation is devoted to healing the children of war.
Kim is an example of the grace of forgiveness.
Robbie Parker lost his six-year-old daughter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on the 14th of December 2012 in Connecticut.
Just hours later with tears still running down his face he stood in front of the cameras and he said this.
We'd like to offer our deepest condolences to all the families who are directly affected by this shooting.
It's a horrific tragedy and we want everybody to know that our hearts and our prayers go out to them.
This includes the family of the shooter and I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you and I want you to know that our family and our love and our support goes out to you as well.
How could Robbie Parker manage to find words like this at such a time?
His six-year-old daughter dead and he went on as we move on from what happened here,
What happened to so many people,
Let it not turn us into something that defines us but something that inspires us to be better,
To be more compassionate and more humble people.
Robbie is another example of the grace of forgiveness.
Let's pause for one minute now,
60 seconds,
To give thanks for those who have found the strength to forgive even in very difficult circumstances.
Welcome back and there are so many more inspiring examples,
So very many more.
People who somehow faced tragedy,
Loss and suffering and still found it possible to forgive.
Some of these people have become famous,
Others are less well known but each of them gives us a lesson for life.
Nelson Mandela is among the famous forgivers.
He spent 27 years in prison in South Africa.
He had every reason to hate those who had deprived him of his freedom for such a part of his life.
When he was released from prison in 1990 he helped negotiate an end to apartheid.
He became president of the country that had imprisoned him.
He promoted forgiveness by creating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
Forgiveness was offered and former enemies became reconciled.
Nelson Mandela left us with these memorable words.
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead me to my freedom,
I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind I'd still be in prison.
We all know that if we've been hurt by someone it can be very difficult to forgive that person and the greater the hurt the more difficult it can be to forgive.
Maybe even now some of us here can remember unhappy circumstances,
Something in the past where we have suffered some hurt and where even now we are finding it difficult to forgive.
I have come across situations where people have carried resentment with them for years,
In some cases even to the grave.
Some people have been unable to forgive even during their final illness and knowing that the grave awaited them.
I'm sure we've all come across people who are imprisoned by bitterness.
Bitterness about something that happened way back in the past.
As you listen to the complaining you ask yourself what could possibly have been done to cause such ongoing resentment.
But could this be us in some of our darker moments?
Let's pause for another minute,
This time to ask ourselves if we have been reluctant to forgive and to move on.
Welcome back.
Now from time to time all of us will feel hurt by something said or done intentionally or otherwise.
But we can't afford to allow these hurts to change our personalities,
To turn us into bitter people,
To turn us into people who go about carrying and displaying a burden of resentment.
Holding resentment like this is such a waste of a life.
There's so much more we can do with our lives rather than dwelling on hurts from the past.
We owe it to ourselves to try to move on.
We owe it to ourselves to forgive.
In the Christian tradition,
In the Lord's Prayer,
We have these words,
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
When people say this prayer they are not asking God to forgive them unconditionally.
They are asking God to forgive them in the very same way that they forgive those who have caused upset to them.
Millions of people say this prayer every day but it can be recited parrot-like without an understanding of its implication.
I'm asking God to forgive me in the same way as I forgive others.
So if I don't forgive others then what?
Writers and advisors from all traditions talk about the importance of forgiveness.
How forgiveness is essential to our own happiness.
The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi.
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
C.
S.
Lewis.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Lewis B.
Smeeds.
History gives us more inspiring examples of forgiveness.
Gordon Wilson was a draper in Enniskillen,
County Fomana in Northern Ireland.
He became known as a peace campaigner during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
On the 8th of November 1987 a bomb planted by the Provisional IRA exploded at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen.
Gordon Winston himself was injured but the bomb fatally injured his daughter Mary who was a nurse.
Only a few hours after the bombing Gordon Wilson was interviewed by the BBC.
He describes his final conversation with his daughter as they both lay buried in the rubble.
She held my hand tightly and gripped me as hard as she could.
She said,
Daddy I love you very much.
He said these were her exact words to me and those were the last words I ever heard her say.
And astonishingly he added these words,
But I bear no ill will,
I bear no grudge and he went on,
I will pray for these men tonight and every night.
Let's pause for another minute,
This time to give thanks for the grace of forgiveness that was found by Gordon Wilson in a time of unspeakable loss.
Jonathan Bardon,
The historian speaking of Gordon Wilson says,
No words in more than 25 years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful emotional impact but I bear no ill will,
I bear no grudge.
Now there is another aspect of forgiveness that we can overlook.
Yes we need to forgive others for the mistakes of their past but we need to forgive ourselves too for the mistakes of our past.
Every one of us has made mistakes.
We have all at some time done or said things,
Things that we later come to regret and there are the undone things.
When action was called for we've left things undone and we've left words unsaid.
We have failed to stand up for what is right but if we fail to forgive ourselves for these mistakes we wind up carrying a burden possibly for years and that burden prevents us from being the best we can be.
It's an example of the old saying give a dog a bad name.
We give ourselves a bad name by failing to forgive ourselves we fail to believe in ourselves we fail to believe that we can be better and therefore we fail to be our best selves.
We leave ourselves burdened as if we have a ball and chain tied around our ankles.
We go about our days carrying a weight that should have been laid down long ago.
This burden slows us down,
It prematurely ages us,
Causes harm to our physical and mental health.
It prevents us from being the good decent people that we would really wish to be.
In the case of self-forgiveness we have this advice from the inspirational Steve Mariboli,
The author of Life,
The Truth and Being Free.
Steve says the truth is unless you let go,
Unless you forgive yourself,
Unless you forgive the situation,
Unless you realize that the situation is over you cannot move forward.
Now when we talk of forgiving other people this does not mean reconciliation.
They are two separate things.
We don't have to become best friends with someone who is around us.
Forgiveness doesn't excuse the wrong that's been done to us.
But we must try to forgive and having forgiven it makes a lot of sense to try to forget as well.
If we don't forget then it's like cutting down a weed from above ground without getting at the roots.
In time the weed will come up again.
The same could happen with our resentment.
So forgive and forget is best.
Even though we should try to make sure that we will not put ourselves in the same position again.
Remember the advice once bitten twice shy.
And forgiveness doesn't depend upon the other person asking for forgiveness,
Although it might help if they do ask.
Because this is our deliberate act of forgiving.
It doesn't depend on the other person at all.
Forgiveness lifts a burden from ourselves.
When we forgive someone else we are the beneficiaries.
We are the sufferers when we fail to forgive.
And the other person doesn't have to say they're sorry.
Their sorrow or the lack of it does not affect the question of forgiveness at all.
First of all they may not be sorry or they may not even be aware that they've caused us any upset.
And even if they were aware at one point the other person may have long forgotten that they've caused us upset.
So we need to take a step back.
We need to pause and think about it objectively.
And if we do that we will likely find that we are the only people troubled by the situation.
The wrongdoer has moved on maybe long ago and so should we.
Stacey Bannerman found comfort in the idea of forgiveness.
Her quote,
Forgiveness won't change the past but it can change the present which is where the future starts.
So the message from all sides is that we really must try to move on and practice forgiveness.
If we hold on to bitterness we can find ourselves wishing pain and harm on the other person.
We wallow in negative thoughts.
We replay the injury or the perceived injury.
We re-experience the hurt over and over and over again.
And while all this is going on in our heads the offender is going about his or her business scot-free unaware of our ongoing suffering.
We are the ones burdened with the ill will and this feeling of ill will causes us still further harm.
How can we feel good if we go about our lives wishing harm on someone else?
So we start to see everything through a fog of negativity.
We come bitter and we expect the worst and when we go about our business expecting the worst what happens?
We treat other people negatively and the negativity comes right back to meet us so the worst happens.
And so it goes on and on and the downward spiral continues.
Our relationships are affected.
Who would want to spend time with someone who's full of resentment and bitterness?
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies says Nelson Mandela.
So to the question should we forgive?
The answer is a clear yes.
And how often should we forgive?
For an answer to that we can look to the words of Jesus as quoted in Saint Matthew's Gospel.
Peter put this question to Jesus.
Lord how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
Up to seven times?
Jesus said to him I do not say to you up to seven times but up to seventy times seven.
Now I think we can safely say that Jesus did not ask us to keep count of our acts of forgiveness.
Keeping count from number one to number 490.
I think we can assume he means leave the numbers to the accountants.
Just forgive and allow ourselves to benefit from the grace of forgiveness.
Closing thought.
There is a power at work in our universe.
It is beyond our understanding but it is evident everywhere.
It works through nature.
It has brought us into being.
Through it we enjoy the miracle of our existence.
That power will support us each time we take a stand on the side of love.
Each time we stand up for justice and peace.
Every time we take a stand for what is right.
Whenever we take a risk by forgiving and by forgiving allowing ourselves and others to begin again.
So let us resolve to forgive.
To forgive today.
To forgive tomorrow and every day.
Let each of us give ourselves a chance to begin again through the grace of forgiveness.
Namaste.
