Well, my oh my. I am so happy to have received responses from 5 people about the last blog. 5 is such a small and such a big number - depending on what you are counting. What a strange and lovely feeling, to know that 5 people on 3 continents were all thinking enough about forgiveness on the same day and sat down to write about it. I want to share a lovely quote:
someone once told me a story about how in their village, if someone had a problem they’d tell one person who was a gossip, who’d tell everyone else, and suddenly the problem wasn’t a problem anymore. i think there’s a lot to be said for this.
And a question:
When I’m kind to somebody, for whom am I so?
I think that’s a great question to ponder. The kind of question that you think you’ve answered until one day you find that you have a new way of looking at it. Perhaps some questions are there for life. Kind of like carrying around a ring of keys that open different doors at different times in our lives.
I’ve been thinking about it recently. How do we really let go of the things we’ve done that hurt people? Do we need to hear them say that they forgive us - in whatever way we need to hear it… "I understand", "It wasn’t your fault", "I’m ok now", "You were young/upset/going through a tough time", "You hurt me so badly, and I hated you for a while, but I don’t any more, and I don’t hurt any more either, and it’s over", "we all make mistakes", "you did your best", "I love you, it doesn’t matter any more", "I’m sorry too", "I no longer curse your name in my sleep, get over yourself" etc.
Can we forgive ourselves in the absence of the forgiveness of the person we hurt? I think the answer is yes, and often we have to, but it’s a lot harder to do. No, really it is silly of me to think I know the answer to that. Some people live with unimaginable burdens. I heard a radio show one time about a man in New York who set up a voicemail service and advertised the number in a newspaper as the ‘Confession Line’ (more…)