Why Forgive?

Forgiveness, Relationships 0

And I think if we went to court, some strange friendship court where you can get a ruling about these things, I think I would win, still, even after all these months. The pain has softened ever so slightly, but it still seems like she did something wrong. How do I forgive someone who doesn’t think she did anything wrong? Or who doesn’t care?

I could maybe do it if she groveled or begged. It would be even easier if she cried a lot. I would be more apt to forgive her if she told me she thought I was a genius with great fashion sense and that she wants to be like me someday. But nothing. No phone calls. No emails. No large, fragrant bouquets of flowers. Nothing. Why would I forgive someone who doesn’t even think she needs to be forgiven?

This is why. Because I want my neck and my back muscles to stop hurting, to unfurl like window shades. Because I want to sleep instead of having endless imaginary conversations. Because I want my mind back. Because I want my life back. Because she’s not the only one on the hook. Because every time I hang her up on that hook, the hook reaches down and grabs me, too.

— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines, p. 167

Freedom from Blame

Forgiveness, Growth, Letting Go, Relationships 0

Choosing to forego blame actually feels very good. Taking responsibility for what we have done and letting others off the hook when they aren’t ready to do the same is really very freeing. Having made a practice of letting others do and be whatever appeals to them is a gift to ourselves and to them, a gift that simply changes every aspect of our journey.

We are here to watch and learn. We are here to bless and witness. We are here to offer guidance when sought. We are here to share our experience, strength, and hope. Our purpose is never to blame. Everyone is stuck in an old perspective, a place where growth can’t happen, if we are caught in the web of blaming.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 133

God’s Generosity

Beauty, Forgiveness, God, Gratitude, Life 0

Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, “Well, that’s pretty much what I thought I’d see,” you are in trouble. At that point, you have to ask yourself why you are even here. And if I were you, I would pray “Help.” (See earlier chapter.) Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

Sometimes — oh, just once in a blue moon — I resist being receptive to God’s generosity, because I’m busy with a project and trying to manipulate Him or Her into helping me with it, or with getting my toys fixed or any major discomfort to pass. But God is not a banker or a bean counter. God gives us even more, which is so subversive. God just gives, to us, to you and me. I mean, look at us! Yikes.

God keeps giving, forgiving, and inviting us back. My friend Tom says this is a scandal, and that God has no common sense. God doesn’t say: “I have had it this time. You have taken this course four times and you flunked again. What a joke.” We get to keep starting over. Lives change, sometimes quickly, but usually slowly.

— Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, p. 85-86

Two Kinds of Forgiveness

Forgiveness, Healing 0

Poor September! How much easier, to be hard and bright and heartless. Instead, a very adult thing was happening in that green, new heart. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. You, being sharp and clever, will have noticed that I used “practice.” Forgiveness always takes practice to get right, and September was very new at it. She had none of the first sort in her.

— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, p. 200

Unconditional Love

Forgiveness, God, Universalism 0

Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus’ love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become totally conditional after death? Is it the same Jesus? Or does Jesus change his policy after his resurrection? The belief in heaven and hell is meant to maintain freedom on all sides, with God being the most free of all, to forgive and include, to heal and to bless even God’s seeming “enemies.” How could Jesus ask us to bless, forgive, and heal our enemies, which he clearly does (Matthew 5:43-48), unless God is doing it first and always? Jesus told us to love our enemies because he saw his Father doing it all the time, and all spirituality is merely the “imitation of God” (Ephesians 5:1).

— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, p. 103

Being Right

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

Maybe you are in the right. Maybe you are standing on the higher moral ground in this situation, and the other person is clearly wrong. You feel that someone ought to hold the person accountable, and so you are doing your best to bear witness to this injustice — afraid that if you don’t, no one will, and that person will get away with it. Something inside you doesn’t want an injustice to be allowed to stand, unchallenged and unrectified. So you remain attached to being right, but that attachment causes you to suffer. You are the one who is obsessed, and you are the one who is losing sleep over someone else’s actions — therefore, you are the one who will have stress-related health problems. Meanwhile, the villain in this story might be peacefully unconcerned about his wrongdoing and blissfully unaware of your rage — and he is sleeping just fine at night!

— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 25

Giving Up

Forgiveness, Letting Go 0

Sometimes people are afraid that it is weak to forgive, that they are giving up a battle they must continue to fight. But when we forgive, we are not giving up our value systems, our points of view about an injustice, or our right to dislike someone. We are giving up a rigid attachment to thinking that things could have or should have gone differently. We are giving up the pain from our disappointed expectations. We are giving up the hope for a better past, therefore giving ourselves the gift of a richer present.

— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 23

Learning to Fail

Forgiveness, God, Growth, Life 0

It turns out the Christian story is a good story in which to learn to fail. As the ethicist Samuel Wells has written, some stories feature heroes and some stories feature saints and the difference between them matters: “Stories . . . told with . . . heroes at the centre of them . . . are told to laud the virtues of the heroes — for if the hero failed, all would be lost. By contrast, a saint can fail in a way that the hero can’t, because the failure of the saint reveals the forgiveness and the new possibilities made in God, and the saint is just a small character in a story that’s always fundamentally about God.”

I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God.

— Lauren F. Winner, Still, p. 193-194

The Scandal of the Particular

Acceptance, Faith, Forgiveness, God, Redemption 0

Jesus had no trouble with the exceptions, whether they were prostitutes, drunkards, Samaritans, lepers, Gentiles, tax collectors, or wayward sheep. He ate with outsiders regularly, to the chagrin of the church stalwarts, who always love their version of order over any compassion toward the exceptions. Just the existence of a single mentally challenged or mentally ill person should make us change any of our theories about the necessity of correct thinking as the definition of “salvation.” . . .

Jesus did not seem to teach that one size fits all, but instead that his God adjusts to the vagaries and failures of the moment. This ability to adjust to human disorder and failure is named God’s providence or compassion. Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God’s own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to have with us. Just the Biblical notion of absolute forgiveness, once experienced, should be enough to make us trust and seek and love God.

But we humans have a hard time with the specific, the concrete, the individual, the anecdotal story, which hardly ever fits the universal mold. So we pretend. Maybe that is why we like and need humor, which invariably reveals these inconsistencies. In Franciscan thinking, this specific, individual, concrete thing is always God’s work and God’s continuing choice, precisely in its uniqueness, not in its uniformity. Duns Scotus called it “thisness.” Christians believe that “incarnation” showed itself in one unique specific person, Jesus. It becomes his pattern too, as he leaves the ninety-nine for the one lost sheep (Matthew 18:12-14). Some theologians have called this divine pattern of incarnation “the scandal of the particular.” Our mind, it seems, is more pleased with universals: never-broken, always-applicable rules and patterns that allow us to predict and control things. This is good for science, but lousy for religion.

— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, p. 56-57