I love this! For the past ... decade? ... I have been learning to work with my emotions, not wrestle them into submission. (Is it odd that watching Pixar's Inside Out was actually a big catalyst for this?)
Queen Bee is wise in all things, and that line specifically has definitely helped me to forgive when anger and hurt is still present. It's taken a long time to come around as forgiveness as letting go from within, rather than needing something from the other person (or eagerly waiting for karma to settle scores) but seeing it as releasing an attachment to a person or suffering has definitely helped. Work in progress, always!
I appreciate this musing as I currently live in tension and wrongness with someone who has obliterated boundaries. Anger should move us and when we tamp it down, I think it does make us harm our own bodies in one way or another. I also think there is some relationship between forgiveness and power. Like it’s much easier to forgive in whatever form when we have power to leave, power to enact consequences for the other person, or even power to protect ourselves. I think we can “let go” of what we don’t have power over, but I find it much harder to reach forgiveness.
Do you know what form of the word is used in the Lord’s Prayer? We do like a good opportunity to rush to the happy ending at the expense of character development, but I don’t think Jesus was generally a big proponent of that.
Thank you for your writing. And while it’s obvious that dude needs to learn how not to wield his patriarchal empowered imposing himself on others, he should wonder what button got pushed that he felt moved to speak to you.
Mushrooms sound magical. I used to know someone who used them very intentionally to process things and then continue that processing when back in regular reality, which seemed a powerful tool for growth for them. But I think there was a temptation to perpetually dwell in that cycle and then regular life felt hard.
I've definitely come to think of forgiveness as "I don't need anything from this person" (literally the idea of forgiveness in the way we talk about debt forgiveness -- whatever we feel is owed to us **from that person** is relinquished), so basically what Ruttenberg describes as pardon. I think that kind of forgiveness includes working through our feelings to get to the state that Desmond Tutu describes: that you're not consumed by hate/anger, so "you are no longer chained to the perpetrator." Basically, freedom!
I was estranged from my dad for 20 years, and late in those years it just started to seem pointless, so I “forgave”him (putting a single word on it makes it seem like a discrete event when it was really a process0 and we re-established communication. It was never the same, but I’m glad I did it. When he died several years later, I was glad that we had repaired the breach in our relationship. Shrooms? Great fun, but I never asked them to fulfill a named function (like promoting forgiveness), I just let them take me where they may.
I like the Desmond Tu-Tu definition you mention and I particularly like C S Lewis’s (I think) suggestion that forgiveness is to set someone free and then to discover it was you that was set free.
I also like the idea of separating pardon and forgiveness. As I see it, forgiveness has nothing to do with the offender and everything to do with the offendee.
Pardon/absolution may come from the offendee, but focus on the offender, and may be granted by an authority other than the offendee, which may itself further the offence against the offendee, if the offender is not prevented from engaging in further offences.
I love this! For the past ... decade? ... I have been learning to work with my emotions, not wrestle them into submission. (Is it odd that watching Pixar's Inside Out was actually a big catalyst for this?)
Mushrooms!! 🍄 🤣🤣🤣
Queen Bee is wise in all things, and that line specifically has definitely helped me to forgive when anger and hurt is still present. It's taken a long time to come around as forgiveness as letting go from within, rather than needing something from the other person (or eagerly waiting for karma to settle scores) but seeing it as releasing an attachment to a person or suffering has definitely helped. Work in progress, always!
Loved this story. And those blessed distinctions from the rabbi & bishop 🙏🏽 I love the moth! Where can we listen to your puppeteer story?
I appreciate this musing as I currently live in tension and wrongness with someone who has obliterated boundaries. Anger should move us and when we tamp it down, I think it does make us harm our own bodies in one way or another. I also think there is some relationship between forgiveness and power. Like it’s much easier to forgive in whatever form when we have power to leave, power to enact consequences for the other person, or even power to protect ourselves. I think we can “let go” of what we don’t have power over, but I find it much harder to reach forgiveness.
Do you know what form of the word is used in the Lord’s Prayer? We do like a good opportunity to rush to the happy ending at the expense of character development, but I don’t think Jesus was generally a big proponent of that.
Thank you for your writing. And while it’s obvious that dude needs to learn how not to wield his patriarchal empowered imposing himself on others, he should wonder what button got pushed that he felt moved to speak to you.
Mushrooms sound magical. I used to know someone who used them very intentionally to process things and then continue that processing when back in regular reality, which seemed a powerful tool for growth for them. But I think there was a temptation to perpetually dwell in that cycle and then regular life felt hard.
I've definitely come to think of forgiveness as "I don't need anything from this person" (literally the idea of forgiveness in the way we talk about debt forgiveness -- whatever we feel is owed to us **from that person** is relinquished), so basically what Ruttenberg describes as pardon. I think that kind of forgiveness includes working through our feelings to get to the state that Desmond Tutu describes: that you're not consumed by hate/anger, so "you are no longer chained to the perpetrator." Basically, freedom!
I was estranged from my dad for 20 years, and late in those years it just started to seem pointless, so I “forgave”him (putting a single word on it makes it seem like a discrete event when it was really a process0 and we re-established communication. It was never the same, but I’m glad I did it. When he died several years later, I was glad that we had repaired the breach in our relationship. Shrooms? Great fun, but I never asked them to fulfill a named function (like promoting forgiveness), I just let them take me where they may.
I like the Desmond Tu-Tu definition you mention and I particularly like C S Lewis’s (I think) suggestion that forgiveness is to set someone free and then to discover it was you that was set free.
I also like the idea of separating pardon and forgiveness. As I see it, forgiveness has nothing to do with the offender and everything to do with the offendee.
Pardon/absolution may come from the offendee, but focus on the offender, and may be granted by an authority other than the offendee, which may itself further the offence against the offendee, if the offender is not prevented from engaging in further offences.