During the Didgeridoo workshop at Inner Sun Yoga, Phil Jones, musician, sound healer, interfaith minister and spiritual teacher, reminded us of the power and importance of forgiveness.  Genetically inclined through my Irish ancestry to be a committed grudge-holder, his invitation provoked a dramatic response within my being.  I hung my head in shame over the number of grudges I have chosen (and still choose) to carry in my life and was forced to humbly face the gaping chasm if my own spiritual ineptitude.  As a recovering perfectionist, looking into the face of my own shortcomings is never pleasant.  Apparently I am still human. 

 

For obvious reasons, I cannot presume to teach about forgiveness.  So I humbly invite you to accompany me as we look to the experts in the field for tools in helping us to accept the invitation to forgive. The teacher that comes to mind for me is Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus' entire ministry and lived experience seemed to be about opening to remember the truth of God's love.  Inherent in this unconditional love is the promise of forgiveness.  For this reason, Jesus told those who sought his healing, "Your sins are forgiven you."  He proclaimed this not as some sort of magical incantation, but as an affirmation of truth.  In God's unconditional love, there is nothing to forgive.  The God that Jesus knew was infinitely compassionate, merciful, loving and kind.  As human beings, however, we are often anything but. It is for this reason that Jesus gave us tools for releasing the constrictions we create in our own hearts through the grudges and anger we harbor over the perceived betrayals and injustices of others. 

 

The prayer that we have come to call "The Lord's Prayer" is one such tool.  In the English translation we have been taught, the central line of the prayer is "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."  The implication of this translation is that forgiveness is conditional.  God will only forgive us to the extent that we are able to forgive others.  As I look at my own struggles with forgiveness, all I can say is OUCH!  From this perspective, God's forgiveness is a long way off. 

 

Fortunately, recent studies in linguistics have illuminated a more compassionate perspective on this prayer, in particular, this line about forgiveness.  In his groundbreaking work, Prayers of the Cosmos, Neil Douglas-Klotz sheds light on the original meaning of the Lord's Prayer.  In Aramaic (the language that Jesus spoke), "Forgive us our trespasses" becomes, "Washboqlan khaubayn(wakhtahayn) aykanna daph khnan shbwoqan l'khayyabayn".  This phrase, translated back into English means something like this:  "I let loose the cords of mistakes binding me, as I release the strands I hold of others' guilt." 

 

As we reflect more deeply upon the original meaning of this phrase about forgiveness, what it seems to remind us is that it is not God's forgiveness we are in need of, but our own.  When we do harm to another, or withhold forgiveness from someone that we perceive to have harmed us, we hurt no one but ourselves.  A constriction is created in our heart space that limits our ability to remember the love that we are.  The resulting experience is a perceived sense that the flow of God's love, which in our original state of grace flows freely into and through us, is now somehow blocked.  It feels as if we have placed a dam in our own heart, blocking the river of God's love. 

 

It is this dam we are invited to remove as we invite the virtue of forgiveness into our lives.  And as a dam is not constructed in one day, neither is the task of forgiveness.  As Jesus reminded, we must forgive 70 times 7 times; in other words, over and over and over again.  The good news is that we need not undertake the daunting task alone.  Perhaps the simplest prayer of forgiveness is that which Jesus uttered on the cross, "Forgive them Father, they know not what they are doing."   In this simple prayer, Jesus gave to God the task of healing the hurt in his own heart over those that had betrayed and now undertook to kill him, while at the same time releasing his executioners from the judgment he may otherwise have been tempted to hurl upon them. 

 

As we embark upon this journey of forgiveness, may these seven steps be our guide:

 

1) Recognize the places of constriction that we have created around perceived hurts, betrayals, etc.

 

2) Ask God for help

 

2) Accept the invitation to forgive

 

3)  Ask God for help

 

4) Forgive again and again and again

 

5) Ask God for help

 

6) Rejoice in the love of God as it flows more and more freely though us as we feel our grudges being released.

 

7) Thank God for the grace of forgiveness