FORGIVENESS & RECONCILIATION

Donald Miller once described forgiveness in a book (Father Fiction) as not holding another person accountability for the burden you carry. I liked that description. It doesn’t mean you won’t carry a weight or that your situation has not changed due to what happened, but it means you don’t hold someone accountable for it. Here’s another story.


The Empty Exchange
by Peter Rollins

Samuel and Luka had been lifelong friends. Their relationship stretched back to when they were both children and continued through adolescence into their adult years. But their friendship really deepened when, during the war, they fought side by side in the trenches.

Yet, when they returned from the war, they both fell in love with the same woman. Although she finally married Luka, Samuel continued to harbor his own deep feelings for her.

As time went on, Samuel’s parents were tragically killed, and he inherited his family’s estate. Although now a wealthy man, he found it hard to accept the death of his parents and sought emotional support from the one woman he had always loved.

Amidst the intensity of the circumstances, a brief affair ensued between Samuel and Luka’s wife. Unable to live with the secrecy of their actions, Samuel ended the affair and confessed all. Luka, devastated by the news, looked Samuel in the eyes and said, “Before God and all the heavenly hosts, I sweat to you now that I will never accept your apology.”

These words haunted Samuel for many years, for he felt awful about what he had done and yearned to be reconciled once more with his friend. Yet he understood the pain and heartache he had caused and knew that his friend was a man of his word. Samuel knew that his friend would remain true to his vow and would never accept Samuel’s offer of repentance, even if Luka now wanted to.

Yet after years of wrestling, he decided that it did not matter whether his apology was accepted or not. What mattered was that he approach his friend and express his sorrow. So, early one evening Samuel gathered his courage and went to Luka’s house. Upon seeing Luka, Samuel fell to the ground and cried out, “Old friend, I know that you cannot accept my apology because you made a solemn oath all those years ago. But I must tell you that there has not been a day when I have not been brought low by my actions. I have never been able to free myself from this pain, and I am truly sorry for what I did.”

Luka smiled with compassion, for over the years he had come to understand that those had been dark days for everyone, and that Samuel had been suffering from great depression. So he addressed his repentant friend saying, “I made a vow never to accept your apology, and I intend to keep my word. But seeing you like this makes such an apology superfluous. Indeed, if I were to accept your apology, then this would mean that I considered you to have intentionally hurt me--something that I know is not the case. So I reject your apology as unnecessary and thus keep my vow intact, not because I wish to continue our estrangement, but so that we can truly be reconciled as brothers once more.”

After this Samuel and Luka were reunited and went on to grow old together as friends and companions once more.




This story looks at reconciliation instead of forgiveness. Whereas forgiveness was a prerequisite for repentance in “The Unrepentant Son,” here, reconciliation involves the offering of repentance as a prerequisite. In other words, Luka needed to hear the apology to know that Samuel was sorry, but Luka’s rejection of the apology meant that he understood what Samuel was going through and the circumstances surrounding the actions. In rejecting the offered gift, their friendship is restored.

Now, I’ve experienced this personally. I have a friend who felt I treated her badly. I don’t actually agree that I did anything wrong, but I was truly sorry for my offenses and had I known the actions which I deemed harmless would offend I would never have done them. I was truly penitent. What did she do? She accepted my apology in full recognition that I was a bad person. She will still bring it up today though she has accepted my apology.

Contrastingly, when someone apologies for something that I completely understand and with whom I empathize I say “No apology needed,” or “Please, it’s fine,” or “You don’t need to apologize,” or “Really, it’s ok,” or “I’m the one who should apologize to you,” or many times “I didn’t even realize I was supposed to be mad or upset. Forget it, man.” I actually find myself rejecting the apology and our communion restored.

Forgiveness is hard. Reconciliation is harder.

Starting in 2003, the government of Rwanda released tens of thousands of genocide perpetrators who confessed to what they did. There was overcrowding of prisons and a backup of court cases, so this definitely was a factor in the decision to do this, but can you imagine a government doing such a massive release of prisoners? And prisoners of genocide? Yet they did. And these perpetrators went back to their home towns. . .

This one act created an intense situation in which forgiveness was forced on the table as an option between perpetrators and families of victims. Laura Waters Hinson, a DC filmmaker, produced a film while a graduate student. It’s called “As We Forgive.” In 2008, she won the Gold Prize in the Student Academy Awards for Best Documentary for “As We Forgive.” It chronicles the life of two women who are on two different journeys of reconciliation in the aftermath of the genocide.

Laura is a beautiful woman who was able to find stories of beauty in Africa, for which I’m grateful. Through the film and her own story, she’s taught me about forgiveness and reconciliation. Check out her clip. Listen to the entire clip especially the end when forgiveness becomes personal for her.
As We Forgive Interview

LIVING A BETTER STORY

I’m meeting with a group of friends who are reading a book called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” but we’re only discussing the book during 2 of 10 or 12 sessions. We’re mostly concerned with living a better story. Most people see life as a story. But they think you have a great story if you’ve been through some great tragedy or drama and have come out a winner. I think what we’re doing is a bit different. We and the book talk about living a better story even when nothing is wrong, in times of peace, at least on the outside. In other words, is it possible to live a great story without huge drama and why does it matter?

We’ve been giving an assignment. We’re talking about the importance of knowing what you want and wanting the right things. I have to ask people what they believe I want and see if it matches up with what I say or think I want. What do you believe I want in life? If you have an answer will you e-mail back please? You need not spend hours of time. It can be a simple or quick response. Thanks!

I’m not in the writing mood this week, so here is a story to explicate what it means to live a better story.



“A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller
Chapter 9 Excerpt
How Jason Saved His Family

When I got back from Los Angeles, I got together with my friend Jason who has a thirteen-year-old daughter. He was feeling down because he and his wife had found pot hidden in their daughter’s closet. She was dating a guy, too, a kid who smelled like smoke, and only answered questions with single words: “Yeah,” “No,” “Whatever,” and “Why?” And “Why?” was the answer Jason hated most. Have her home by ten, Jason would say. Why the guy would ask. Jason figured this guy was the reason his daughter was experimenting with drugs.

“You thinking about grounding her?” I asked. “Not allowing her to date him?”

“We’ve tried that. But it’s gotten worse.” Jason shook his head and fidgeted his fingers on the table.

Then I said something that caught his attention. I said his daughter was living a terrible story.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what I meant. I probably wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t just returned from the McKee seminar. But I told him about the stuff I’d learned, that the elements of a story involve a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Even as I said this, I wasn’t sure how it applied to his daughter.

“Go on,” my friend said.

“I don’t know, exactly, but she’s just not living a very good story. She’s caught up in a bad one.” I said a lot of other things, and he kept asking questions. We must have talked for an hour or more, just about story, about how novels work and why some movies are meaningful and others simply aren’t. I didn’t think much of it. I just figured he was curious about movies.

A couple of months later I ran into Jason and asked about his daughter. “She’s better,” he said to me smiling. And when I asked why, he told me his family was living a better story.
* * *

That night after we talked, Jason couldn’t sleep. He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn’t provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn’t mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she’d chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence. “She’s not a bad girl,” my friend said. “She was just choosing the best story available to her.”

I pictured his daughter flipping through the channels of life, as it were, stopping on a story that seemed most compelling at the moment, a story that offered her something, anything because people can’t live without a story, without a role to play.

“So how did you get her out of it?” I asked. And I couldn’t believe what he told me next.

Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into. He remembered that a story involves a character who wants something and overcomes a conflict to get it.

“I started researching some stuff on the internet,” Jason said, “and I came across an organization that builds orphanages around the world. And that sounded to me like a pretty good ambition, something maybe my family could try to do together. It sounded like a good story.”

“Right,” I said, trying to remember the elements of story myself.

“So I called this organization,” Jason continued, “and it takes about twenty-five thousand dollars to build one of these orphanages. And the truth is, we don’t have the money. I mean we just took out a second mortgage. But I knew if we were going to tell a good story, it would have to involve risk.”

“That’s true,” I said, remembering it from the seminar.

“So I went home and called a family meeting,” my friend continued. “I didn’t tell my wife first, which it turns out was a mistake. But I told them about this village and about the orphanage and all these terrible things that could happen if these kids don’t get an orphanage. Then I told them I agreed to build it.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“No, I’m not. And my wife sat there looking at me like I’d lost my mind. And my daughter, her eyes were as big as melons and she wasn’t happy. She knew this would mean she’d have to give up her allowance and who knows what else. They just sat there in silence. And the longer they sat there, the more I wondered if I’d lost my mind too.”

“I actually think you might have lost your mind,” I said, feeling somewhat responsible.

“Well, maybe so,” Jason said, looking away for a second with a smile. “But it’s working out. I mean things are getting pretty good, Don.”

Jason went on to explain that his wife and daughter went back to their separate rooms and neither of them talked to him. His wife was rightly upset that he hadn’t mentioned anything to her. But that night while they were lying in bed, he explained the whole story thing, about how they weren’t taking risks and weren’t helping anybody and how their daughter was losing interest.

“The next day,” he said, “Annie came to me while I was doing the dishes.” He collected his words. “Things had just been tense for the last year, Don. I haven’t told you everything. But my wife came to me and put her arms around me and leaned her face into the back of my neck and told me she was proud of me.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“I’m not,” my friend said. “Don, I hadn’t heard Annie say anything like that in years. I told her I was sorry I didn’t talk to her about it, that I just got excited. She said she forgave me, but that it didn’t matter. She said we had an orphanage to build, and that were probably going to make bigger mistakes, but we would build it.” My friend smiled as he remembered his wife’s words.

“And then Rachel came into our bedroom, maybe a few days later, and asked if we could go to Mexico. Annie and I just sort of looked at her and didn’t know what to say. So then Rachel crawled between us in bed like she did when she was little. She said she could talk about the orphanage on her web site and maybe people could help. She could post pictures. She wanted to go to Mexico to meet the kids and take pictures for her Web site.”

“That’s incredible,” I said.

“You know what else, man?” Jason said. “She broke up with her boyfriend last week. She had his picture on her dresser and took it down and told me he said she was too fat. Can you believe that? What a jerk.”

“A jerk,” I agreed.

“But that’s done now,” Jason said, shaking his head. “No girl who plays the role of a hero dates a guy who uses her. She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.”







Actually even if someone isn’t a Donald Miller fan, then you’ll probably still like this book. The guy leading our group discussion, for instance, is not a fan but raves about this book. The leader, a friend of mine, is a storyteller, himself; he uses film. The husband-wife relationship tugs at my heart strings more than the focus of the story (the relationship with the daughter) because of the commitment made between them and because their relationship affects the relationship with the daughter; a marriage is a creative relationship. The part in the story that gets me is that even after his wife hadn’t said anything like “I’m proud of you” in years, even though he had a bad year with her, even though his daughter was very distant from him and yelling and punishments made it worse, things changed. Things could change and they did; the relationship with his wife was redeemed . The relationship with his daughter was redeemed, and it was redeemed through a better story. Go read the book.

FATHERS

There is a guy who inspires me somehow when he writes. I don’t fully get it. You think if you’re writing books about self-discovery and experiencing life you can’t possibly continue to have the same fresh, honest, raw, ignorant and learning posture while writing but somehow he does that. You would think that with more knowledge and writing he would start writing more authoritative books, but this guy is both humble and honest. I love him. His name is Donald Miller. He’s written 5 books. He had 1 re-released (his first book but no one knew about the first publishing of it, so it seems more like his 3rd book, but chronologically it’s his first) called “Through Painted Deserts.” Now he currently has two other books re-released right now, “Searching for God Knows What” and “Father Fiction.” When you have 3 out of 5 books re-released that means you‘re either really good. . . . . . Or really bad. Ha ha!

“Searching for God Knows What” was considered his best book by both Donald and me before his 5th book (“Million Miles in a Thousand Years”). I haven’t read it yet so we’ll see how I feel. But I’m currently reading “Father Fiction.”

Fathers.

Hmmmm. . . .

I saw Donald speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver while I was in South Africa in 2008, and I didn’t understand how he was asked by Obama to do that, but he apparently started some mentoring project that helps lots of young kids who don’t have fathers. Donald was one of those kids. And writing this book, “Father Fiction,” was a way to work through some of his fatherless issues.

I sometimes wonder if it’s better to have no father than to have a poor father or bad fathering. I wonder if you can do negative damage which might be worse than the absence of good construction. I don’t know. But, for boys, there seems to be something that is learned by the presence of a father. Something seems to be transferred whether good or bad. And the question is how do you transfer the good stuff for kids who don’t have fathers.

Don’s first father was Dr. Huxtable on the Cosby Show. Don loved that family so much he thought “Black people have it perfect.” This would make many Black people in America laugh. It made me laugh, but I loved how this young Texas kid had a positive image of Black people at so young and age with so pioneering a show.

One thing I’ve seen is that people will find fathers wherever they can. And sometimes you don’t know that you are a father. It’s sometimes thrust upon you whether you choose it or not. The tough part about fathering is learning how to both encourage and build up while being honest and truthful at the same time. You see “in life, you are pretty much going to do the things that make you feel good about your self, make you feel important and on purpose, and walk away from the things that make you feel like a loser.” So if you make a kid feel like a loser she or he probably won’t gravitate towards you. I see it in my own life. I stay away from places, things, and people that make me feel like a loser. Otherwise, I start believing it if I hear it enough. Then I start asking myself “Is it true? Am I a loser?” I look in the mirror pinching my cheeks, examining myself, asking “Is this what a loser looks like?” “I knew losers were short, but I’m not THAT short.”

Fathers are important. . . . For both sons and daughters, girls and boys. It’s something I can’t get away from, true if I know it or not. In South Africa, there is a lack of black male role models and I had many people asking me formally or informally to be their mentor. But I even had a girl ask me to be her life coach. I sometimes wonder what people see. But even if you don’t see it in yourself, even if you don’t accept a fathering position, people are watching and learning. So I live in that funny tension between both fathering and being fathered and wanting to father even better than I was fathered. I supposed I shouldn’t think about standards, but it’s quite natural.

The Mentoring Project - http://www.thementoringproject.org/