Tea: Vanilla Lapsang
Music: Rush, "Subdivisions"
Time: Night.
Here's my question chain of the day:
What constitutes true forgiveness? Does it mean forgetting the wrong done? If so, how is it possible to forget -- not file away, not set aside, but lose all memory of -- something which leaves a scar? Isn't the scar itself a reminder?
I don't have answers. I have hopes, and I have desires, and I have aspirations.
But I don't have answers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
In speaking with other survivors of abuse and with people in different seminaries, I've found a general accord. One forgives, and that means not dwelling with anger or resentment or clinging to pain, or allowing them to abide in or cling to one. Forgetting . . . To ask a woman married to an addict to forget that he has spent the mortgage payment, time and again, on drugs is to ask her to throw away her life, her home, and (if she has them) her children's lives and home, as well.
Forgetting is linked with forgiving. If the aforementioned woman keeps gnawing at the memories of her husband spending the mortgage money, then she cannot forgive, cannot part herself from pain and anger, and cannot release herself to move on in her life. Depending on her actions, she may keep her children and husband from healing, as well.
'Forgive' and 'forget' are inextricably linked, not so that we can return to a painful situation and say, 'Please hurt me again,' but because we cannot simultaneously cling to a negative and forgive it. We have to let go -- but we have to do so wisely.
Dwelling in anger bars forgiveness from entering one's space.
Not learning from history . . . Sisyphus is a bad role model. Few of us want to repeat the same mistakes again and again.
We can let go gracefully, with true love. (One of my classmates and I used to say, 'Go with God, but go.' Think of Fiddler on the Roof: May God bless and keep the Czar -- far away from us.'
Where families or couples are healing, it is wise to learn from the past and idiocy to pin old mistakes to the refrigerator, where they will be seen every day. Demarcations are needed, as well. There's a difference between mistakes and patterns.
You had space for a comment and you're getting a leaflet.
You cannot erase your memories, but you can leave a goodly portion of the pain behind.
Perhaps the simplest rule is, 'Forgive, and forget your anger.'
Post a Comment