The all-important forgiveness

What kinds of thoughts and associations arise when you hear the word? “forgiveness”? Do you have any experiences with this phenomenon from your own ?life??

The blue picture below means a lot to me. Why? I will explain that later in this post.? But first a story.

A father’s reconciliation??

Ernest Hemingway wrote a lovely short story about the value of forgiveness titled? “The Capital of the World.” For various reasons, the relationship between Paco and?his father has fallen apart. The son has done something to hurt his father, he was ?thrown out of the house and this has led to feelings of shame and guilt that send him ?down a destructive path. Paco is drawn to bull-fighting and other high-risk and ?potentially fatal activities. ?

After a few years, the father’s greatest wish is to reconcile with his son. He searches? throughout all of Spain but has no idea how to find him. Finally, in a last, desperate ?attempt to get hold of Paco, the father places an ad in the newspaper El Liberal – the ?local paper for Madrid. The advertisement read as follows: “Paco, meet me at Hotel ?Montana noon Tuesday. All is forgiven! Papa”?

Paco is a very common name in Spain. When the father walked towards Hotel? Montana a little before noon on Tuesday, he found more than eight hundred young ?men named Paco standing outside the hotel, all of them hoping to meet their father ?and perhaps receive the forgiveness they had not believed was possible.?

The crooked paths of life?

Life takes many unexpected turns. My first forty-four years on this earth have taught? me, among other things, that some of the most important lessons we learn in life are ?hard won through painful experiences. Purification through suffering, as espoused by ?the Russian classical authors Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.?

It strikes me that so much of what we are striving for, and become stressed about, is? something visible and quantifiable. But aren’t the most important things in life for all ?of us really that which can be neither photographed nor measured? Love. Belief in ?the future. And forgiveness. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince says, the ?essential is invisible to the eye. ?

What is forgiveness???

What is forgiveness? Well … Answering that question is every bit as difficult as? answering the question “What is love?” Some things are better understood through ?experience than explanations. ?

There is so much that I don’t know about forgiveness. There is so much about? forgiveness that I don’t understand. But I have learned that: ?

• Forgiveness can sometimes infuse that which appears dead with renewed life.??
• Forgiving others does not mean that wrongdoing is fine. It is neither about? forgetting. Serious violations are to be punishable by law, forgiveness notwithstanding. ?
• To ask for forgiveness is not the same as apologizing. To ask for forgiveness? requires an unconditional acknowledgement of guilt and a willingness to make up for ?what one has done and to work on changing oneself. “I am sorry if you felt that …” is ?in many ways the opposite of asking for forgiveness. Are these things ever mixed up ?in our times??
• Every once in a while, when somebody, demonstrating unexpected strength,? forgives others who do not deserve forgiveness, what arises is something called grace. Grace must be one of the most beautiful things in existence. Grace is so ?powerful that it can fundamentally change people’s lives.?

Literature is full of powerful stories that describe grace, such as Valjean’s? undeserved meeting with grace in Les Misérables, the prodigal son in the Bible, or ?how grace softened the shriveled hearts of the moralists in Babette’s Feast.?

Holding oneself accountable for own mistakes and shortcomings??

It appears as if the ability to forgive others is tightly bound up with the ability to ask? for forgiveness and forgive oneself. Nobel prizewinner in literature Jacinto Benavente ?expressed this as follows: “to forgive is only learned in life when, in turn, we need a ?lot of forgiveness.”?

Or like the woman in the Gospel according to Luke who is forgiven for her sins and? develops a new ability to show compassion for others. Jesus said: “her many sins ?have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven ?little loves little.” (Luke 7:47).?

If we do not acknowledge our own tendency to make mistakes and behave selfishly,? it is more difficult to forgive others for their mistakes and defects.?

Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”?

The blue picture is a painting my father commissioned for me at a time when I had been in a difficult place for several years. I am rowing a rowboat, facing the ?darkness, and can’t see the light that is in front of the boat. It becomes more and ?more of a struggle with every stroke. A heavy burden of shame and guilt. But the ?light before me is there nonetheless, regardless of whether I can see it, as I keep ?battling, all by myself, on a dubious course.?

But the rowing didn’t end there ...??

My father had another painting done for me, in addition to the blue picture featured at? the beginning of the post. The red picture is grace. It has changed my life.?