Forgive and know Inner Peace

Sunday, March 15, 2015

I love signs. Here’s one you might see in a business: “Hourly Rate Depends Upon Customer Attitude.” Here’s one you might see on private property: “No Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” These words were on a billboard I actually saw: “Illiterate? Write for details.”

Here is a sign that may well be hanging on the wall in some businesses across the country: "To err is human – to forgive is not company policy."

That is not the company policy here.

A “Psychology Today” Magazine article about forgiveness once said, "By giving this gift (forgiveness) to the other, it is the gift-giver who becomes psychologically healed."

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

Research makes it clear what the value of forgiveness is. In one study, top psychologists interviewed a group of incest survivors; none expressed any desire to forgive their perpetrators.

The psychologists assigned half of the women to some forgiveness workshops anyway. When the study ended a year later all participants – those who forgave and those who didn’t completed surveys about their current well-being. Those who forgave reported far less anxiety, sickness and depression then the non-forgivers. A Psychologist involved in the study, Dr. Enright, said, "I have never seen such strong results."

What does forgiveness mean to you? Within the entirety of your idea of forgiveness is there, “no excusing and no forgetting?” in other words, “I can forgive them but there is no excuse for what they did and I will not forget, either.”  Well, I’d say it’s not that, but that it is this (SLIDE): the giving up and releasing of resentment to which you think you're entitled.

 When you say there is no excuse and I will not forget what they did, you have placed them in a prison cell in your consciousness, and you have become a jailor.  And while you are jailor to your prisoner, you are prisoner, too.  You are not free while you imprison anyone. A jailer is not free, because they are bound together with their prisoner. They must be sure that they do not escape, and so they spend their time, in consciousness, keeping watch on them. The bars that limit your prisoner become the world in which you live, along with them. It is your prisoner’s freedom that gives liberty to both of you.

I invite you to hold no one prisoner in your heart. Release instead of bind, for thus you are made free. The way is simple: every time you feel a stab of anger, realize that you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall on you or be averted as you choose to condemn or free.

You could think of judgment this way: each person who seems to tempt you to be angry is actually your savior from the prison house of judgment. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.

I invite you to be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. Would you deny him/her that? The Father's Love for him/her is the same Love that belongs to you. Your function here on earth is only to forgive. Everyone else is as God created them. And you are what they are, a wholly loved child of God. Forgive them now the sins you have attributed to them , and you will see that together in Love, you are One.(A Course in Miracles)

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

  “Through your forgiveness of others you will find yourself.” (Fr. Leo Booth )

How much better we feel when we can bring peace to a situation by some carefully chosen word, by some gesture of love, or by simply saying: "Forgive me," or "I understand, and I love you."

Throughout my life I’ve had many things to forgive and I feel peace more fully because of it.

In the summer of 1953 I was seven years old.  Seven, when I was sexually molested by the 19 year old teenage son of a friend of my mother. I had no real understanding at that age that the inappropriate touching and demand to touch back in the same way was wrong.

Seven years later, now 14, I found myself alone with this man again. We were no longer in the old neighborhood where I could have just left the house, we were in New York City. I had no way to leave and get home on my own when he forced himself on me again. I got away and called my parents to come and get me.

These were events that could have scarred me for life. Some forgiveness was involved in my limited understanding and “it worked,” no scars nor unhealthy attitudes were carried forward.

In 1987 I was a 20% owner in a packaging and shipping business. My partner, I’ll call him Leonard, proposed to me one day that we sell the business and that he had a buyer. I didn’t really have any leverage in the deal and I agreed.  We sold the business to “Jerry,” taking monthly payments with a lump sum due in five years.

I agreed with Leonard that I would take my potion of the sale price in five years when the lump sum was paid.

A year or so after the sale I run into Jerry and he says something like, “I hope you were happy getting paid early.”

Me: “Huh?”

Jerry: I approached Leonard a few months ago and asked if he’d take less if I paid off the loan early and he agreed. I thought you would know that.”

Me: “Nope. First I’ve heard of it”

I contacted Leonard to ask him why he hadn’t told me about the new offer. His answer was, “Well, you were willing to wait five years so I thought it wouldn’t make a difference to you. I was going to pay you on the original due date.”

I wanted to know what happened to the money and a few days later he brought me a hand written accounting sheet showing the distribution of funds. Interestingly there was no total on this long list of payouts. When I totaled the list at home the number was far short of the amount Leonard told me he re-negotiated.

To make a long story much shorter, Leonard showed he was still paying on the second mortgage he took out on his house. I was suspicious about that, so I called the bank pretending to be Leonard and asked them to verify the payoff date of the second. They gave me that date… he had paid off the second mortgage and lied to me about it.

Our attorney sent him a letter asking for immediate payment under the threat of a law suit. He responded by filing for bankruptcy. I lost my significant initial investment and any profit that I would have realized from the sale.

Once again a significant forgiveness opportunity.

Forgiveness is a form of God's Divine love, a love that keep us in tune with our world and in harmony with every person in it. Forgiveness allows that Divine Love to be known on a very personal level.

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

Let us thank God for the love that forgives and blesses, the love that dispels disharmony, the love that restores peace and understanding. May we always be aware it is ours.

If you don’t have a regular spiritual practice each evening, why not extend forgiveness each night before bedtime to wherever it is needed in your life?

We’ll close today with these words from Ephesians: "Do not let the sun go down on your anger… be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another." 

Would you do that with me?