Forgiveness/Reconciliation/2

 

Forgiveness then, is a perspective. It changes both the environment and the person to whom that perspective is given. It recontextualizes that which is in need of being rectified--all the while recognizing that expiation as such, is impossible--and accords it a value it did not have before. A subordinate value, that is.

 We see this most poignantly in cases were circumstances require a final reckoning with someone about to die. Reconciliation is not always possible even then, but when it does occur all accounts are cleared, and both parties concerned allow the reality of love to recontextualizes any perceivable wrongs committed. Other matters and other feelings take precedence. This is end-game, after all, and thus the tension of all social fictions (such as egotism) fall away—though again, not always. The deeper and fuller context in which love is permitted to occur allows us to act in such a fashion such that neither fear, nor falsehood can hinder the act of allowing forgiveness to take place.

What that means, very concretely, is that we allow things, just as they are, to change and transform us. This is precisely the reason that self-forgiveness is a grace. That part of you that aspires to said grace does so precisely because it cannot, for whichever reason, accept itself as it is. If you cannot fully feel the wound though, it cannot be forgiven either. Which is to say…circumstances as they are, are interfered with by the stressful compulsion to maintain social fictions. These fictions, rather than reality as such, then dictate not only our responses to a given situation but also determine how this situation will continue to unfold within the context of our lives. A singularly lamentable state of affairs! Until our lives are drawing to a close.

This is not to say that one is incapable of generating an attitude within which forgiveness is able to flourish though. We can indeed prepare the soil, as it were. We cannot make forgiveness happen, but we can make room for it within our lives. We can create an internal environment within which it can grow and develop. Not that this makes forgiveness any easier, of course. 

Forgiveness is as painfully beautiful as it is healing in its stark simplicity. We can learn much from it. There is in the grace of forgiveness a recognition that wounds were inflicted and that they did in fact matter. It matters now, however, in a different way than heretofore. What mattered once within the framework of social mores now can be seen within the context of a human life—becomes a precious and irreplaceable facet of the full richness of a love that is shared and lived out over time with others.


We can come to understand that we ourselves are forgiven in the act of granting the possibility for reconciliation. Being wronged is, after all, reciprocal. It takes place within a complex association of people, events, places, thoughts and feelings. The attitude that allows forgiveness to take place then is a recognition of this mutuality, and we call it gratitude. Without it nothing whatever can change or touch us.

Gratitude is a ceaseless flow; a river of texture and nuance and appreciation which makes possible all singularities of experience. In fact, forgiveness itself is just such a singularity. It comes but once, and upon that single act of radical reorientation all subsequent acts of forgiveness arise spontaneously. The reorientation is a true metanoia, and the shift in perspective occur simultaneously with it. They give rise to each other. Each subsequent act of forgiveness then is a deepening and an outgrowth of the first. Forgiveness, which takes place outside of time becomes process within it.