If Only

In “Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow”, a book written while he knew that he was dying, Forrest Church wrote,

“The only way to reconcile yourself, make peace with yourself, make peace with your neighbor, make peace with God, find salvation, is to break through and love — to forgive and to love. You don’t change the person you forgive. You change your own heart. So anything that you can do to reconcile also means that at the end of your life, when you’re given a few months to live, you can look back without regret.

The two saddest words in the English language are “if only,” and they ring with the most poignancy at a time that a person gets word that he or she has a terminal illness: “If only I had stopped drinking; if only I had dared to change careers when I could; if only I had reconciled with my father when I had a chance.”

I agree with Forrest. I believe that “If Only” are the saddest two words in the English language. I would add also that they are loneliest too. How many of us live with this sense of regret for the things we have done, or just as painfully failed to do? How many of us live in isolation from people we have known and loved in our lives because of our pride? How many of us have let past wrongs done, or perceived to have been done, stop us living the loving and connected lives we are capable of?

So why do we find it so hard to seek and give forgiveness? Why is reconciliation so challenging? Why does pride hold us in this sense of regret? Why are so many of us visited in the darkest night with the ghosts that whisper “If Only”

Well because it is not easy. It requires us to rise above and beyond our small selves to a larger way of being. As Sara Moores Campbell has claimed. “There is incredible power in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not rational. One can seldom find a reason to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is often undeserved. It may require a dimension of justice (penance, in traditional terms), but not always, for what it holds sacred is not fairness, but self-respect and community. Forgiveness does not wipe away guilt, but invites reconciliation. And it is as important to be able to forgive as it is to be forgiven.”

No it is not easy, but it is vital. Not only for ourselves but for the greater good also. Forgiveness is about reconciliation it is about bringing wholeness and healing to all. This is why, in my experience, failing to offer forgiveness and failing to atone for our own wrongs and mistakes makes reconciliation impossible and I have come to believe that it is this that breeds a sense of isolation and loneliness, deep within us. It is not by chance that atonement can be broken down to at-one-ment. For it is such acts that bring about oneness in life.

I recently spent a few days away with a group of people exploring the subject of forgiveness. We were together in a beautiful and loving setting and it was an open environment in which we all talked about our struggles with forgiveness of others and of ourselves. I believe that we all gained a great deal from our time together and I hope it renewed us in our efforts to reconcile ourselves with our pasts and those we have shared our lives with, so as to live better lives in the future. One thing that came strongly out of the weekend was this sense that forgiveness is not about forgetting. Yes it is about healing and reconciliation, but not about simply abandoning the past and passively letting go. In fact if anything real forgiveness is a true act of remembrance. It is about growing from the past and becoming increasingly whole people.

Again as Sara Moores Campbell said, “No, we do not forgive and forget. But when we invite the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from some of the destructive hold the past has on us. Our hatred, our anger, our need to feel wronged – those will destroy us, whether a relationship is reconciled or not.”

Our varied struggles with forgiveness showed how difficult it was to truly reconcile ourselves with our pasts, with ourselves and with those we have shared and share our lives with. Forgiveness is not easy. It is easy to say perhaps “I forgive you”, but those are just words, it is far from easy to truly mean them though. We cannot just simply will ourselves into it and it certainly isn’t an overnight matter. The key, as in all things, is to be open to it. Here lays its power and its love. Here lays the key to be freed from that aching loneliness of regret and the ghosts of “If Only”. Not only for ourselves but for the good of all. I have come to believe that all our lives depend upon it

Again to quote Sara Moores Campbell,

“…we cannot just will ourselves to enter into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it and still not be able to.

We can, however, be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn’t of our own making. Its power is rooted in love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape as “Love seeking to create community.” This kind of love is human, but is also the grace of transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invite the power of agape to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival.”

At one point during the weekend we discussed the limits of forgiveness and whether there were any. A friend said that he didn’t know how he would react if someone did anything to his son and many people agreed with him and then I shared an example of this and the power forgiveness. I recounted my dear friend Claire’s reaction to witnessing her son being killed in front of her on a crossing. The driver did not stop at the crossing and took Ethan’s life. A power from within or beyond her compelled her to forgive him there and then. I know from watching her piece her life back together since that if she hadn’t have done so there and then she could not have survived herself or if she had she would have lived with an aching bitterness for the rest of her life. Not that the last nine years have been easy, she has been to hell and back many times, but that power, the power of love, has held her through it all and I believe that it was that same power that compelled her to forgive the driver of the car that day on the side of the road. A love that passeth all rational understanding, but one that can hold and sustain us through whatever happens in life, if we would let it have its way and bring it to life in our being.

Forgiveness is a true act of Love, in the purest Agapeic sense of the word. It is an act of the heart, it takes real courage, Remember that courage comes from the French word for heart “Coeur” In the Hindu sacred poem “The Bhagavad Gita” you hear this reflected “If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive, If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred.” You see it reflected in the dying words of Jesus on the cross “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This same loving courage was expressed in the way that both Martin Luther King and Gandhi led their movements of non-violent resistance. These were powerful loving soul forces that inspired healing and reconciliation taken up by the likes of Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa and “The Truth and Reconciliation Hearings” that took place there following the end of Apartheid. It can be the same with our individuals lives and our individual hearts. At some level I think we all need to reconcile ourselves with someone or something, even if it is just our own pasts.

This is why I have come to believe that forgiving is not about forgetting at all. In fact what it is really about is remembering. Actually it is more than that, forgiveness is an act of remembrance. It is about bringing the memory alive and creating something from the past. Reconciliation is not just something that occurs between us, but also within us. In each of our hearts and minds and souls. If we can make something from our past hurts we can create meaning from even the hardest moments of our lives and bring a new wholeness and openness to our lives. In so doing we won’t live out our lives with that aching lonely feeling of regret and be visited by the ghosts of “If Only”. In so doing we will leave something to pass on to those who follow and our lives will have truly proved worth dying for, by the love we have left behind.

Below is the full version of Sara Moores Campbell's reflection on "Forgiveness" quoted above

“Forgiveness” by Sara Moores Campbell, from “Into the Wilderness”

There is incredible power in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not rational. One can seldom find a reason to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is often undeserved. It may require a dimension of justice (penance, in traditional terms), but not always, for what it holds sacred is not fairness, but self-respect and community. Forgiveness does not wipe away guilt, but invites reconciliation. And it is as important to be able to forgive as it is to be forgiven.

No, we do not forgive and forget. But when we invite the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from some of the destructive hold the past has on us. Our hatred, our anger, our need to feel wronged – those will destroy us, whether a relationship is reconciled or not.

But we cannot just will ourselves to enter into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it and still not be able to.

We can, however, be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn’t of our own making. Its power is rooted in love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape as “Love seeking to create community.” This kind of love is human, but is also the grace of transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invite the power of agape to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival.