Forgiveness

For the last few days I have been writing about throwing out HATE and FEAR.  Another way to look at throwing out hate is letting go of grievances.  Holding grievances is one of the roadblocks to our plan for freedom and transformational change.  If we are willing to let go of grievances, we can expect to change the very fabric of our human existence, and I believe we can and will do this in my lifetime. I also have come to believe this transformational change happens in its own time.  There are no guarantees we will wake up tomorrow transformed and no reasons why that isn’t possible.

One of the main players in our transformational journey is, “Forgiveness.”  Forgiveness is an idea often misunderstood but needed to be better able to work on our own healing.  One of the more memorable forgiveness events I can remember is the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania in October 2006.

From NPR Investigations:

It was in the tiny community of Nickles Mines that a man stormed into a one-room schoolhouse and shot 10 young girls, killing five. He then killed himself.  Since the tragedy, people around the world have been inspired by the way the Amish expressed forgiveness toward the killer and his family.

Forgiving the Killer

Charles Roberts wasn’t Amish, but Amish families knew him as the milk truck driver who made deliveries. Last month, it was announced that the Amish community had donated money to the killer’s widow and her three young children. It was one more gesture of forgiveness, gestures that began soon after the shooting.

(Donald Kraybill, is a sociologist at nearby Elizabethtown College and co-author of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.)

“I think the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer’s burial service at the cemetery,” Kraybill says. “Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer’s family.”

(Jonas Beiler, is the founder of the Family Resource and Counseling Center.)

Tragedy changes you. You can’t stay the same,” Beiler says. “Where that lands,you don’t always know. But what I found out in my own experience if you bring what little pieces you have left to God, he somehow helps you make good out of it. And I see that happening in this school shooting as well. One just simple thing that the whole world got to see was this simple message of forgiveness.”

Beiler says that because the Amish can express that forgiveness, and because they hold no grudges, they are better able to concentrate on the work of their own healing.

I leave you with todays lesson from the “Course in Miracles,” which speaks to the leap of faith these loving people made. Today’s lesson presents us with one of the greatest ‘prayers’, one of the greatest guidelines for action within the illusory universe that we can ever apply to any situation we appear to encounter at any place or any time. These words will give us the appropriate and specific response to absolutely any situation in which we feel the need to choose the guidance of our higher self.

“What would You have me do?

Where would You have me go?

What would You have me say, and to whom?”

”Blessings on your journey”

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