Some say you just have to forgive. That to not forgive is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to die. I have heard so many statements about forgiveness and it has always left me feeling like a failure. So many people telling me that ‘it’s about being the bigger person’, as if forgiveness is a badge we wear and how important it is to ‘let it go and move on’. There are those whose actions still make me feel hurt, or angry, or frustrated. I began to believe it was my failing for not ‘forgiving’ them.
At Mass in the Sermon I heard a vastly different philosophy. Forgiveness is not about how you feel, forgiveness is how we choose to treat each other. For me, actions and words have always been far more important in terms of personal responsibility than feelings, despite the contemporary dialogues around emotions which seems to simply be omnipresent. For years I argued with my own children that their feelings were not the centre of the universe and that it was far more important to act in a moral manner. Trying to do what is best for the other, that is how we forgive. That I can do. It’s not warm and fuzzy – it’s really just about human dignity and not wanting ill for another. If we can leave emotion out of the equation that suits me.
I was thinking I was ok – for a moment. Then the priest reminded us of the forgiveness of Jesus in the crucifixion and that beyond that – on the cross – he asked God to forgive us. At the end, in the midst of all that pain, he thought of someone else’s wellbeing. That is forgiveness. Then came the biggie – we are called to forgive from the heart. Now, today we have a particular way of imagining what we mean by ‘heart’. Our understanding of heart is limited. The ancients tell us that it is the seat of our being, it is where we ‘are’. Is it our conscience, our soul, our essence? It is where we make choices and it is also where we hold pains. In that regard, when we truly forgive it must come from the heart, from the place which holds our pain and our choices. It’s a complex notion.
I may be no closer to seeing myself as a forgiving person, but I think I can now view the discussion with a fresh lens.
The Female Theologian 