forgiveness

"Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive.  But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation.  And sometimes--and this may seem incomprehensible to you right now--that road may even take you to the miracle of fully restored trust."

-The Shack

Over the last few days, I've been confronted with a series of stories around the theme of forgiveness.  One, quoted above, was a section of The Shack, which I've now finished.  I won't describe the context in case anyone's planning on reading it, but that part of the book was just one of many that surprised me with its sensitivity and truth.  How many of us have avoided seeking or assuring forgiveness because we're afraid to re-enter a place of significant pain?

A bigger surprise was the movie The Women.  I didn't know much about it when I went-- and had I known more, I might have expected even less.  I'm not exaggerating when I call Saks Fifth Avenue the fifth main character in this movie.  

The actual main characters fit the current Hollywood recipe for success: four Sex and the City-type Manhattanites living outrageous lifestyles and flaunting their quirky hangups like a handbag.  But at key moments in between the strutting and shopping and socializing, the characters' plastic exteriors would almost visibly fracture...revealing utterly human, at times heart-rending, fears, failures and emotions.  Five of the main characters' close relationships were broken by betrayal.  One of the most moving parts of the movie for me was seeing one character trying to hold in the pain of knowing that she had betrayed her closest friend.  The pain was too immense...she couldn't bear it.  So she confessed what she had done.  That set into motion a whole chain of events in which she lost not only that friendship but also her job, the thing she had thought worthy of betraying her friend in the first place.  Of course, reconciliation in a chick flick is considerably easier and sweeter than in real life...but the startling reappearance of hope in a relationship, the flicker amid the dead, dull ashes, is still impactful whether or not it happens during a sweaty, loud birthing scene with Debra Messing.

And today, an amazing movie:  As We Forgive, a documentary on reconciliation efforts in Rwanda following the release of over 40,000 prisoners incarcerated for their participation in the 1994 genocide.  Of the many, many striking things about this film, two struck me the most: 1) the extent to which the men who had killed believed they neither deserved forgiveness, nor could ever be punished enough for what they had done--even death posed too little a threat; and 2) the burdens carried by both those unable to forgive and to receive forgiveness.  

There's no way I could do that movie justice here-- or ever, probably.  The pain endured by those men and women is incomprehensible.  In my easy life, I only hope I can live with even half (one-quarter?  one-eighth?) their dignity and courage.  

I know these stories are all so different...and there's only so much learning you can do by watching...but if they've all shown me one thing, it's that fully restored trust really is a miracle.  When that way appears where once you thought nothing was possible...that is a miracle.  But somehow we (or I) often believe that miracles, to be so called, are supposed to happen without work.  Or significant risk.  And that's just not how it is.  Scary, but true.  I hope I'm learning all I'm supposed to be with all of this stuff...I really do.