The Ineffable Aspects of Forgiveness
by Marina Cantacuzino, excerpted from her book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age
In this hotly contested territory, the only thing I know for sure is that the act of forgiving is fluid and active and can change from day-to-day, hour to hour, depending on how you feel when you wake in the morning or what triggers you encounter during the day.
Forgiveness may unfold like a mysterious discovery, or it may be a totally conscious decision, something you line yourself up for having exhausted all other options. It may have a strong degree of pardoning attached to it, or it may just be a sense that you have released something poisonous or let go of something heavy that no longer weighs you down. In this sense, forgiveness means not allowing the pain of the past dictate the path of the future. It requires a broad perspective, namely understanding that life is morally complicated, that people behave in despicable ways and that some things can never be explained.
While experts may pronounce on the multiple meanings and conditions of forgiveness, those who experience it as a healing path know exactly what it means. Yet for me personally, the more I delve into this expansive and complicated topic, the more entangled I seem to become. Not because I am ambivalent about the benefits of forgiveness but because I am reluctant to pin it down. Something that is so multifaceted and has such profound consequences for the human condition should not be consigned to clichés or glib phrases. Whilst frequently invited to speak on the subject of forgiveness, I don’t consider myself any real expert. My only expertise comes from collecting people’s personal narratives and encouraging and helping them to share these safely. I have become a facilitator, an enabler, a repository of story. I also believe strongly that there is currently a real need to create a place where forgiveness can be unpicked, debated, grappled with and reframed, most especially for those who are uncertain about what it means, who it is for, or indeed whether it is worthy of discussion at all.
In 2004, I founded The Forgiveness Project, a UK charity and not-for-profit that sets out through storytelling to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution can be used to impact positively on people’s lives, through the personal testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of crime and violence. In an era of mounting sectarianism and religious fundamentalism my main aim was to give people an appetite for tolerance.
From the beginning I felt it was essential that the stories were not excessively faith-focused because there seemed a need to free forgiveness from the strait jacket of religion, to make it accessible to people of all faiths as well as those of none. Of course the Christian perspective of forgiveness, and any other religion for that matter, is an important part of the bigger picture but for too long forgiveness has been unhelpfully linked to ideals of self-abnegation as well as heroic endurance. This means it easily takes on this holy “other” quality that detracts from the up-down-backwards-forwards-inside-outside-on-off quality it has in reality. I have come to believe that while forgiving has a very real spiritual dimension (because self-reflection and being consciously compassionate are key to the process) it is not necessarily a religious experience. I remember Marian Partington, whose sister Lucy was murdered by British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, telling me that forgiveness was a word that in her mind had become “barnacled by aeons of piety.”
Not all people of faith, however, cloak the concept of forgiveness with religious meaning. Whilst Archbishop Desmond Tutu (a founding patron of The Forgiveness Project alongside Anita Roddick) is arguably the world’s greatest advocate for forgiveness, the fact he is a global church leader never seems to exclude those who do not share his faith. Somehow able to carry that paradox between the divine and the profane so beautifully, plenty of atheists and agnostics love the man, and admire everything he says and does. This is because rather than adopting a preachy tone he speaks from a place of humility and humanity, injected with sound common sense and often humor too. In a short video he made in 2014 to promote the online Tutu Global Forgiveness Challenge and The Book of Forgiving (Harper Collins, 2014) co-written by his daughter Mpho Tutu, he dispelled the belief that forgiveness means reconciliation: “If someone is constantly abusing you, being ready to forgive doesn’t mean you have to be a masochist. If you have had someone who repeatedly hurts you it is far better to release the relationship than to renew it.”
In other words, if forgiveness is about reconciliation it doesn't necessarily mean reconciling with the perpetrator; first and foremost it means reconciling with yourself. Making peace with a painful event is what allows people to live with hurt and catastrophe, find resolution and move on.
Marina Cantacuzino is founder of The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity that uses storytelling as an instrument for exploring reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators. This excerpt is from the Introduction to her book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015).
by Marina Cantacuzino, excerpted from her book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age
In this hotly contested territory, the only thing I know for sure is that the act of forgiving is fluid and active and can change from day-to-day, hour to hour, depending on how you feel when you wake in the morning or what triggers you encounter during the day.
Forgiveness may unfold like a mysterious discovery, or it may be a totally conscious decision, something you line yourself up for having exhausted all other options. It may have a strong degree of pardoning attached to it, or it may just be a sense that you have released something poisonous or let go of something heavy that no longer weighs you down. In this sense, forgiveness means not allowing the pain of the past dictate the path of the future. It requires a broad perspective, namely understanding that life is morally complicated, that people behave in despicable ways and that some things can never be explained.
While experts may pronounce on the multiple meanings and conditions of forgiveness, those who experience it as a healing path know exactly what it means. Yet for me personally, the more I delve into this expansive and complicated topic, the more entangled I seem to become. Not because I am ambivalent about the benefits of forgiveness but because I am reluctant to pin it down. Something that is so multifaceted and has such profound consequences for the human condition should not be consigned to clichés or glib phrases. Whilst frequently invited to speak on the subject of forgiveness, I don’t consider myself any real expert. My only expertise comes from collecting people’s personal narratives and encouraging and helping them to share these safely. I have become a facilitator, an enabler, a repository of story. I also believe strongly that there is currently a real need to create a place where forgiveness can be unpicked, debated, grappled with and reframed, most especially for those who are uncertain about what it means, who it is for, or indeed whether it is worthy of discussion at all.
In 2004, I founded The Forgiveness Project, a UK charity and not-for-profit that sets out through storytelling to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution can be used to impact positively on people’s lives, through the personal testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of crime and violence. In an era of mounting sectarianism and religious fundamentalism my main aim was to give people an appetite for tolerance.
From the beginning I felt it was essential that the stories were not excessively faith-focused because there seemed a need to free forgiveness from the strait jacket of religion, to make it accessible to people of all faiths as well as those of none. Of course the Christian perspective of forgiveness, and any other religion for that matter, is an important part of the bigger picture but for too long forgiveness has been unhelpfully linked to ideals of self-abnegation as well as heroic endurance. This means it easily takes on this holy “other” quality that detracts from the up-down-backwards-forwards-inside-outside-on-off quality it has in reality. I have come to believe that while forgiving has a very real spiritual dimension (because self-reflection and being consciously compassionate are key to the process) it is not necessarily a religious experience. I remember Marian Partington, whose sister Lucy was murdered by British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, telling me that forgiveness was a word that in her mind had become “barnacled by aeons of piety.”
Not all people of faith, however, cloak the concept of forgiveness with religious meaning. Whilst Archbishop Desmond Tutu (a founding patron of The Forgiveness Project alongside Anita Roddick) is arguably the world’s greatest advocate for forgiveness, the fact he is a global church leader never seems to exclude those who do not share his faith. Somehow able to carry that paradox between the divine and the profane so beautifully, plenty of atheists and agnostics love the man, and admire everything he says and does. This is because rather than adopting a preachy tone he speaks from a place of humility and humanity, injected with sound common sense and often humor too. In a short video he made in 2014 to promote the online Tutu Global Forgiveness Challenge and The Book of Forgiving (Harper Collins, 2014) co-written by his daughter Mpho Tutu, he dispelled the belief that forgiveness means reconciliation: “If someone is constantly abusing you, being ready to forgive doesn’t mean you have to be a masochist. If you have had someone who repeatedly hurts you it is far better to release the relationship than to renew it.”
In other words, if forgiveness is about reconciliation it doesn't necessarily mean reconciling with the perpetrator; first and foremost it means reconciling with yourself. Making peace with a painful event is what allows people to live with hurt and catastrophe, find resolution and move on.
Marina Cantacuzino is founder of The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity that uses storytelling as an instrument for exploring reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators. This excerpt is from the Introduction to her book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015).