Author Archive: directorifi
From your own experience, what is the worst injustice you have ever seen when a person actually forgives?
There are two: Marietta Jaeger, who forgave the murderer of her young daughter. This is documented in a film, From Fury to Forgiveness, which appeared on television in the 1990’s. The other is Eva Moses Kor, who was part of the “twin experiments” at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II and who forgave the Nazis. This is documented in the film, Forgiving Dr. Mengele.
‘Horton Hears a Who’ fosters forgiveness in Northern Ireland
CRUX Media, Rome, Italy – Horton Hears a Who, the classic tale of the elephant Horton and his struggle to save the invisible “Whos,” is a staple in the forgiveness education programs Dr. Robert Enright has been nurturing in Belfast for the past 16 years. Now, according to one prominent media source, Dr. Enright’s curriculum guides have “proven an effective way to teach forgiveness in a community long torn apart by Catholic and Protestant tensions.”
Calling forgiveness therapy “a relatively new and scarcely-used science aimed at understanding and applying the redeeming quality of forgiveness,” CRUX Media says Dr. Enright’s use of Dr. Seuss stories provides “powerful tools for imparting values, especially to children.”
CRUX, an international, independent Catholic media outlet operated in partnership with the Knights of Columbus, featured Dr. Enright’s work in its Jan. 20 website edition.
According to the article, Holy Cross Primary School, for girls aged 4 to 11, was one of the first Belfast schools to adopt Dr. Enright’s forgiveness initiative and has used it continuously since 2001. One of the school’s teachers says forgiveness is a crucial concept there because students have first-hand knowledge of abuse, suicide, violence, and family breakdown.
“This program empowers children to solve their own problems and recognize the inherent worth of others,” according to Annette Shannon, a support teacher at Holy Cross who has worked with Dr. Enright and his curriculum guides for the past six years. The concepts they are learning about self-worth and respect, she adds, “are important and powerful enough to be a force to bring change in their community,”
As he watches his work in Northern Ireland flourish, Dr. Enright earnestly believes, as do many others, “that forgiveness can be a path to peace, to be passed down through the generations.”
Click here to read the rest of this story.
I recently read an article about “50 children under the care of the state were victims of substantiated sexual abuse.” I’m tired of reading about the sex abuse happening in our society. Is there a connection to anger, lack of forgiveness to sex offenders? If there is a connection what about forgiveness therapy for sex offenders; can it help in lowering the chance of re-offending? If so, can forgiveness therapy/curriculum in schools, anger management programs, prisons etc possibly lower the incidences of sex abuse?
What are the costs of forgiving?
When a person is not used to forgiving, this is not unlike a sedentary person starting a physical fitness program. It can be uncomfortable thinking kindly about the other. It takes work. Bearing the pain that the other caused you also is painful, but as you bear the pain, it lessens and lifts. The questions of whether or not to return to a relationship can be painful as can the other’s rejection of your forgiving. All of these might be called “costs,” but they do pay the dividends of emotional healing and possibly relational healing.
Seeing Beyond the Tears
Sometimes when we are caught up in grief and anger, it seems like this is all there will ever be now in our life. Permanent tears. Permanent anger.
Yet, please take a look at two different times in your life in which you were steeped in heartache or rage. The tears came…..and they left.
Today it may seem like these will never end…..but they will.
Take a lesson from your own past. The pains were temporary.
They are temporary even now.
Forgiveness helps them to be temporary.
Robert
