Month: September 2024

Isn’t it wonderful and profound how the Universe and the Ancestors circle around and bring us exactly what is needed? And then remind us again and again!

My lovely daughter called it the “new car syndrome” where you start noticing all the cars that look just like the one you just bought. 😉

Maybe so, or perhaps this is just the most important message for us all right now.

I would tend toward the latter, as that has been my experience – the lessons I need most tend to show up and keep sending reminders.

Thus, this week’s post comes from one of my favorites, Father Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, which not surprisingly had the theme this week of forgiveness and mercy!

Enjoy – and let me know your thoughts.

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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 

Grace re-creates all things; nothing new happens without forgiveness. We just keep repeating the same old patterns, illusions, and half-truths.  
—Richard Rohr  

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 

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. 

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot recently. It has come up in several conversations.

In fact on our ‘End of Life Conversations‘ podcast, my co-host, Annalouiza Armenderiz and I just recorded a video episode talking about the best ways to support people grieving any kind of loss. We spoke about what kind of things you can say that are helpful and comforting and appropriate. And we considered words that wouldn’t be appropriate.

A theme that kept coming up was forgiveness. You’re going to do it wrong sometimes despite your best intentions. And you’re going to witness others messing up as well.

It requires grace to remember forgiveness for yourself and others. The first verses (Suras) of most every part of the Quran begin with Bismallah A Rachman A Rahim (in the name of the Divine who is all compassion and mercy)

I received the following prayers that I share with permission from the Anohki Institute run by my friends Ted Falcon and Tovah Zev.

Please enjoy:

A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness

If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions I forgive them.

And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions I forgive myself.

RIBONO SHEL OLAM

Opening Beyond Forgiveness – An Evening Practice Ribono shel olam. . .

Source of all Being, I now seek to forgive all who have hurt me, all who have done me wrong, whether deliberately or by accident, whether by words, by deed, or by thought, whether against my pride, my person, or my property, in this incarnation or in any other.

May I release the desire for anyone to be punished on my account. May I be free from energies of anger, resentment, and guilt that keep me bound to the illusion of egoic identity.

And Source of all Being, Eternal One, my God and the God of my ancestors, may I no longer be bound by my own forgetting, when I have fallen into the illusion of separateness. May I remember always the One I AM and live into my interconnectedness to others and to all Life.

Let my words, my thoughts, my meditations, and my acts flow from the fullness of Your Being, Eternal One, Source of my being and my Redeemer.