The Start of Forgiveness – everyone can be a jerk

          I’ve been learninga lot about forgiveness, recently.  It’s oneof the active ingredients of resilience, that gift of healing that God has builtinto us.  One of the things I’ve learnedis that we can fight against resilience by not releasing the power offorgiveness.

          Martin LutherKing, Jr. once said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act.  It is a constant attitude.”  The truth of this insight rests in seeing resiliencetriggered inherently when forgiveness is the atmosphere of our emotions.  Essentially, this suggests that we should gothrough life assured that everyone can be a jerk, and, knowing, we’repart of “everyone.”

          The constantattitude is the hard part, right?

          It has tostart each day.  We have to consciouslyrelease it as we begin our morning, like opening the blinds of our windows tothe light, that we shut last night against the darkness.  If we keep the blinds shut as the day begins andprogresses, we keep our homes cooler and darker.  That can happen with our hearts, too.

          We have toopen up to the light daily and to allow it to fill the atmosphere ourhearts.  When we do that our resiliencehas the juice to be reflexive.  It kicksin more readily when someone has decided to be the jerk that day.  If we start with it we’re ready.

          C. S. Lewiswrote… “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes andhopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morningconsists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice,taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieterlife come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your naturalfussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

          I recognizenow that some of my “wishes and hopes” are for retribution to come crashingdown on that jerk!  As that wildanimal rushes me, I can find myself wrestling with it, rather than shoving itback.  Wrestling is an act of embracingwith an intention of dominating as if I’m strong enough to handle it, even tameit.  Instead of shoving it back so thatit isn’t a part of my life, I expect I can deal with it well.

          But that “othervoice” is telling me to shove the animal back. The voice says, I will handle appropriate retribution.  You just get on with living because you weremade to heal and to enjoy the day.

          Eva Kor, whodied on July 4, just several days ago, brought such a demand for recognition ofher anger toward what the Nazis did to her and countless others, that when sheshifted to forgiveness, other people couldn’t believe it.  They couldn’t follow her into it, because she’dtouched their own indignation.  But shediscovered that healing was stronger.  “Gettingeven has never healed a single person,” she said.

          When I considerthe depth of her forgiveness, the darkness she had to close out of her life, andwhen I think of King developing a constant attitude of forgiveness toward the damagedone to him daily, it makes me open the blinds of my windows to let in thelight in the morning.

          Blessings (they’re all around us),          Geoff