True Forgiveness by Michael North
The word forgiving is generally considered synonymous with forgetting. "Forgive and forget" is common folk wisdom. According to this saying you must set aside, by an act of will, the hurt, pain or injury someone has caused you, focus on other things and move on.

But we know that willful forgetting sometimes doesn't work. Read this sentence: "Do not think of an elephant." Of course, you immediately thought of an elephant.

True forgiveness requires a fearless confrontation of the truth - it's not a venting of anger or a call for retribution, but a more passionate connection with one's feelings. Even victims find this a challenging experience.

Real forgiveness is more than a passive pretense of letting go; it is an aggressive remembering. Real forgiveness does not excuse or regret, and does not evade responsibility. It is active; it requires a profound knowledge of the source of pain. One of the truest paths to forgiveness is based on a deep mutual understanding between the victim and the perpetrator.

When this sort of dialogue can occur, the boundaries between victim and perpetrator dissolve -- they are mirror images of each other. In the victim, the perpetrator finally sees himself or herself and the actions involved clearly, and in that searing knowledge faces real justice -- the inescapable justice of his or her own conscience. That punishment is more severe than any prison could inflict, and more liberating than any rehabilitation could provide. In such forgiveness, justice and punishment take place at the same instant as understanding and freedom. It's not easy, and it's not quick. It's not an act of rational will; rather it is a searing surrender of identity. While a religious guide, friend, therapist or family member can help in the process, forgiveness is, in the end, the ultimate act of intimate personal response-ability.

Please consider a short example, condensed from the book, Stories of Forgiveness.

John Plummer helped organize a napalm raid on the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang in 1972 - a bombing immortalized by the prize-winning Associated Press photograph taken of [several victims, including] , Phan Thi Kim Phuc.

For the next twenty-four years, John was haunted by this image. He dreamed of finding the girl and telling her that he was sorry, but he grew more depressed as the years passed.

[In 1996] John was at the Vietnam War Memorial on Veterans' Day. Grown up but still suffering immensely from her burns, Kim had come to Washington to lay a wreath for peace. She introduced herself to the crowd as the girl in the famous photograph, and told everyone that she was not bitter.

Kim said that although she could not change the past, she had forgiven the men who bombed her village, that she felt a calling to promote peace by fostering goodwill between America and Vietnam. John pushed through the crowd and told her he was responsible for the bombing.

He says: "Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow.... She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was 'I'm sorry; I'm sorry' - over and over again. And at the same time she was saying, 'It's all right, I forgive you.'"

Without meeting Kim face to face, John might never have forgiven himself. But he got even more than he hoped for: Kim forgave him.

Reflecting on how the incident changed his life, John maintains that forgiveness is "neither earned nor even deserved, but a gift." It is also a mystery.

We are ready to move on to this higher definition of forgiveness. Ideas like this evolve through history, in fits and starts. Slavery, once the unquestioned law of many lands, is now unthinkable almost everywhere. Non-violence was once thought to be the refuge of the weak and is now understood to spring from the deepest wells of courage.

So it can be with forgiveness. As we work on this, beginning with ourselves, the impact will radiate out through our relationships, families, communities and nations. At the point of stillness where everyone understands the story of John Plummer, we are all profoundly and actively connected, every instant.

By Michael North, for the Hawaii Forgiveness Project A free copy of the book, Forgiveness Stories, is available at: http://www.hawaiiforgivenessproject.org/stories/

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