Sunday
When we forgive, we choose the goodness of others over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own goodness in a way that surprises us.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
Grace re-creates all things; nothing new happens without forgiveness. We just keep repeating the same old patterns, illusions, and half-truths.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Forgiveness and grace have much more to offer any culture than we give them credit for. They are not the weak, pitiful emotions of people who don’t value themselves. They are the generous gift of people who know their worth cannot be diminished or compromised.
—Prentis Hemphill
Wednesday
We are asked to choose which world we want to live in—a world of retributive justice or a world of forgiveness. We can’t operate in both orders.
—Melissa Florer-Bixler
Thursday
We must forgive—we must begin with the words of forgiveness as a mantra that can transform our minds and souls: Father, forgive them. Father, forgive us.
—Megan McKenna
Friday
I once saw God’s mercy as patient, benevolent tolerance, a kind of grudging forgiveness, but now mercy has become for me God’s very self-understanding. Mercy is a way to describe the mystery of forgiveness. More than a description of something God does now and then, it is who God is.
—Richard Rohr
Week Thirty-Seven Practice
Praying to Forgive
Brian McLaren identifies how prayers of petition help us to experience forgiveness:
Since being wounded or sinned against is a terribly common experience, I suspect we need to pay more attention to it. In fact, being wronged is directly linked in the Lord’s Prayer to the reality of doing wrong; we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Father Richard Rohr says it well: Pain that isn’t processed is passed on. Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted. So we need to process our woundedness with God, and that processing begins by naming the pain and holding it … in God’s presence:
Betrayed. Insulted. Taken advantage of. Lied to. Forgotten. Used. Abused. Belittled. Passed over. Cheated. Mocked. Snubbed. Robbed. Vandalized. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. Excluded. Disrespected. Ripped off. Confused. Misled.
It’s important not to rush this process. We need to feel our feelings, to let the pain actually catch up with us…. I’ve found that it takes less energy to feel and process my pain than it does to suppress it or run away from it. So, just as through confession we name our own wrongs and feel regret, through petition we name and feel the pain that results from the wrongs of others…. We translate our pain into requests:
Comfort. Encouragement. Reassurance. Companionship. Vindication. Appreciation. Boundaries. Acknowledgement.
It’s important to note that we are not naming what we need the person who wronged us to do for us. If we focus on what we wish the antagonist would do to make us feel better, we unintentionally arm the antagonist with still more power to hurt us. Instead, in this naming, we are turning from the antagonist to God, focusing on what we need God to do for us. We’re opening our soul to receive healing from God’s ever present, ever generous Spirit.
Reference:
Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2011), 118–119.
Image credit and inspiration: Riho Kitagawa, Kintsugi pottery (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Kintsugi is the artform of repairing a break with gold; we allow the pottery to move forward in grace and beauty, not by discarding or erasing, but by transforming the break into art.
