Willingness To Forgive

The technique of forgiveness is simple enough, and not very difficult to manage when you understand how. the only thing that is essential is willingness to forgive. Provided you desire to forgive the offender, the greater part of the work is already done.  The Sermon On The Mount. Emmet Fox, 1934

Forgiving people does not mean that you have to like the person or their act. Consider this, Christian faith has the story of Jesus being murdered in the most horrific manner known 2000 years ago. To this day, with all of our experience killing, there is still no more painful, grotesque, merciless, way to murder. The images and statues of the event are modest depictions of the brutality of crucifixion and its torturous slow death. During the ordeal, Jesus said, "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do."  He didn't say, "Hey, these guys are cool. I wanna hang with them."

Forgiveness quiets our mind and frees us from the burden of the thoughts, behaviors, acts of people and events of the past. Forgiveness is to drop the weight, opens the dark curtain to let in the light, and walk away with our hands empty to hold onto things that matter. When I've refused to forgive people, events, or myself, I carry a heavy load in both hands, and on my back. My eyes, if they are up, are focused in a tunnel vision. I can't hold anything that matters in my hands or head.  When I find the willingness to forgive, the burden is set down. Maybe I walk around it a few times, and when I take those first steps away from the pile of resentment, I have a chance to live free again. Our eyes are in the front of our head for a reason. We see the present in living color. The past we have to imagine...and it's sketchy, mostly black and white, and always bigger than life.

Letting go. Now, here's the hard part. Once the forgiveness is stated, keep walking and wish the person well, I have to say "X is free and so am I. I wish X well in life. I am free. I am well."   We know this to be true: past events only hurt when we keep them in the present. I can not hurt yesterday. I can only hurt at this moment. If I hurt because of a yesterday experience, a yesterday person, I'm carrying that experience or person or both from the past to the present. Hey, I wonder if the idea of leaving the dead with the dead is a reference to resentments?

I'm not a fan of displaying a statue or image of murder by crucifixion; not even the watered down peaceful version. But as proof that I am capable of forgiving, I can imagine the actual scene as horrible as I can see it, and hear the man forgive his murders "for they know not what they do". I'm not going to join people who hurt me to play games and banter. They're on their own. I'm moving on. I'm not taking them with me, and I'm not going where they're going. I have willingness and that's a start.