Forgiveness and Peace

Forgiveness and Peace

The great forgivers – Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King.  Perhaps more recently we remember Gordon Wilson, whose daughter, Marie, a nurse, was killed by a bomb during the troubles in Northern Ireland.  This is from Gordon’s Wikipedia entry:

In an interview with the BBC, Wilson described with anguish his last conversation with his daughter and his feelings toward her killers: “She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could. She said, ‘Daddy, I love you very much.’ Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say.” To the astonishment of listeners, Wilson went on to add, “But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She’s dead. She’s in heaven and we shall meet again. I will pray for these men tonight and every night.” As historian Jonathan Bardon recounts, “No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact.”

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What strikes me about the people mentioned above is how they are great world changers and how their achievements (bringing about peace, reconciliation and freedom) are all associated with forgiveness.

I have not had great wrongs done to me, I must admit, so I am not well qualified to write on the topic of forgiveness, but I, like most people, can think of people I find it hard to forgive.  Virtually anything you read on forgiveness states that by forgiving others you free yourself of the crushing weight of bitterness, resentment and anger.  I see this but forgiving is so much easier to say than to do.  I can think of someone now who I resent and I have spent a lot of time ‘forgiving’ that person in my mind. It is only when something catches me off guard that I suddenly find myself thinking resentfully again about the person that I thought I had forgiven.  Clearly, forgiveness is not something you just achieve by saying to yourself ‘I forgive that person’.  There is an emotional scar which has to be healed and the only person who can heal it is yourself.  This is stated here much more powerfully by Dr Fred Luskin, a Stanford University psychologist, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, and author of the book Forgive for Good. Alternatively, if you respond more deeply to a sensual rather than analytical treatment of the subject, this is an inspiring video.

 
Forgiveness is a ‘work’, like all the virtues; as Aristotle pointed out, the virtues come from repeated practice.  Forgiveness is a discipline that requires courage, persistence and great wells of compassion. Gandhi said ‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong’.  It also takes time for forgiveness to sink deeper and deeper into our consciousness.   But from forgiveness, true peace emerges – both for the forgiver and for the wider community, and even for the nation.

I am struck quite often by how some newspapers enjoy stoking up the opposite of forgiveness – blame, anger, bitterness, resentment. These emotions apparently sell newspapers.  A friend told me recently how he asked why the campaign being conducted by his local political party was so negative.  He was told that ‘Central Office’ had conducted research that showed how blaming other parties has a much stronger ability to get people out to vote than positive campaigning.  There is something quite ‘stimulating’ about ‘hating’ and ‘blaming’.

If you have someone in your life you find it hard to forgive,  I really hope that you can further your journey towards healing.  You might find Fred Luskin’s site helpful.  It is full of resources, interactive exercises and further information.

If you are in a leadership position, you may find it harder to forgive. Remember the research by the Daedalus Trust that demonstrates how power is often correlated with high levels of testosterone and low levels of compassion.  Visit the site and learn more about how exercising power can affect your ability to relate and forgive.

If you feel relatively unaffected by this debate, you might like to think of our current societal scapegoats – the bankers, the politicians, the leaders of NHS trusts, BBC Boards of Governors and government quangos such as the Care Quality Commission.  How do you feel about these people?  What effect does hearing about them and others’ misdeeds have upon you and those around you?  Is it time to forgive and move on?