Author Archive: directorifi
Juveniles Arrested. . . and Forgiven
The Record, Stockton, CA – Jaime Ramirez, a 28-year-old mentally-ill man, was shot to death on Aug.16 when he interrupted a burglary at the home he shared with his parents and other relatives. Police have arrested a 13-year-old boy and two 14-year-old boys on suspicion of homicide in connection with the killing and for allegedly stealing electronic items worth less than $300.
“We don’t have much, and what they stole wasn’t worth my brother’s life,” Beatrice Ramirez said. “But we can’t have hate toward them, because our religion teaches us to forgive. We forgive them. We’ve been praying a lot, and we know a lot of people in the community have been praying for us.”
The victim’s brother, Victor Ramirez, also expressed forgiveness for the killers. He described his brother as “very friendly” but said he suffered from mental illness.
“It’s been difficult, but we’ll get through this,” Beatrice Ramirez said. “We’ll remember the good times and the memories. God decided to take him now, and now he’s somewhere where there’s peace.”
Read the full story: Three young teens arrested in killing; relatives grieve.
Trayvon Martin’s Mother: “God is healing my heart”
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA – After more than a year on the front page of newspapers and journals with cameras continually in their faces as the murder/manslaughter prosecution wended its way towards an eventual acquittal, Trayvon Martin’s parents are amazing the world with their public grace and forbearance.
“I wouldn’t have applied for this position, but I gracefully accept,” says Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton. “I am going to do the best job I can and try to help other families.
Are there any circumstances under which she could forgive George Zimmerman? “Yes,” she says.
“The spiritual side of me knows that eventually I will have to forgive him so that I don’t block my blessings. I know that. Am I ready to do that now? I am not. That’s something I pray for. I pray for my forgiveness. Because just like I want God to forgive me, I want to forgive others. But, I’m just not at that point right now where I can say that I want to forgive him. God is healing my heart,” she says.
In the meantime, Sybrina says she wants all of us to “remain peaceful.”
Read the full story: “Sybrina Fulton’s Forgiveness”
Minneapolis Mom Forgives Her Son’s Murderer
CBS News/Blueprint for Life website – Mary Johnson, a 59-year-old teacher’s aide was justifiably distraught when her only son, 20-year-old Laramiun Byrd, was shot to death at a party in 1993. The killer was 16-year-old O’Shay Israel.
“I wanted Justice,” Johnson said. “He was an animal. He deserved to be caged.”
And he was. Israel was sentenced to 25 1/2 years in prison. He served 17 years before being released earlier this year. In a strange twist of fate that demonstrates the power of forgiveness, Israel now lives next door to Johnson in a North Minneapolis apartment building–an arrangement set up by Johnson’s appeal to her landlord.
“Unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out,” says Johnson. “Me forgiving him does not diminish what he has done. Yes, he murdered my son. But the forgiveness is for me. It’s for me.”
Johnson met with Israel several times before he was released from Minnesota’s Stillwater State Prison and eventually forgave him. Now??Israel and Johnson together sing the praises of forgiveness at prisons, churches and before large audiences throughout the Midwest.
Watch the CBS News video: The Power of Forgiveness
Mother Forgives Drunken Driver Who Killed Her Son
timesfreepress.com, Chattanooga, TN – Even before her 25-year-old son died from horrendous auto crash injuries, Tiki Finlayson had already decided to forgive the wrong-way drunken driver who killed him.
That was what she felt like God needed her to do, to make her son’s death mean something. She said forgiving the woman driver was almost an impulse.
“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die,” she said. “Holding anything against her doesn’t change the fact that Kevin isn’t here. I chose to take control.”
Finlayson met Latisa Stephens, the driver who killed Kevin, three days before the woman’s court sentencing. She made Stephens an offer: she would agree to push for a lower sentence if Stephens promised to dedicate part of her life to 1N3, the organization created in Kevin’s honor.
She would have to stand before crowds with Finlayson and say over and over again what she did and why she did it. Finlayson said she wanted to mentor her, to help her get her life in order. Stephens agreed. She promised to help the organization weekly.
“I forgive you,” Finlayson said. “But I want you to understand what you’ve done.” The two held each other for a long time.
Stephens was sentenced to eight years in prison for vehicular homicide by intoxication and 6 years supervised probation.
Since then, Finlayson says she thinks of all the good that has come from losing Kevin. A man in Memphis got Kevin’s heart. His liver went to save a 72-year-old man. Both his kidneys were used, too.
And 1N3 has provided grief counseling, addiction counseling, and awareness at schools. It is named 1N3 for a sobering statistic: One in three people are affected by drunk driving. The group has taken off and now reaches people across the nation and around the globe.
Read the full story: “The loss of a son sends a family on a journey into the depths of their own hearts.”
Shunning the Impulse to Seek Revenge
Here is a brief excerpt from an article “Mother forgives drunk driver after crash killed her son” that appeared in the July 28, 2013, edition of timesfreepress.com, the online version of the Chattanooga (TN) Times Free Press. Written by Joan Garrett McClane.
Forgiveness may be trumpeted in church and on counselors’ couches but it’s not a cultural virtue. We live in a world of open grudges. We live in an angry world made more so by screaming television housewives and George Zimmerman verdicts.
Biologically, according to Fred Luskin, author of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, we are negatively biased. The human brain naturally focuses on the darkness. And when we are hurt emotionally or physically, our bodies, our brains go on guard. Our nervous system reacts. Trauma teaches lessons that are hard to forget.
Robert Enright, a forgiveness researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said few people are taught how to forgive because we are ambiguous about the value of forgiveness.
We laud figures who can overcome anger. We quote Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
We laud characters who take vengeance, too. James Bond. Harry Potter. Batman.
So if someone is going to make forgiveness a practice they have to prepare for tragedy, expect to be wronged, Enright said.
Look at the Amish. When a gunman executed five schoolchildren in Nickel Mines, Pa., in 2006 the crime scene hadn’t even been cleaned up before Amish families were sending notes of forgiveness to the killer’s family. They brought the widow food and flowers. Half of those at the killer’s burial were Amish.
These tight-knit communities emphasize a predisposition toward forgiveness and shun the impulse to seek revenge, instead believing justice to be a divine matter.
At its core, regardless of spiritual belief, people come to forgive because they come to recognize every person’s tendency to err, Enright said.
“The biggest reason that people resist [forgiveness] is the profound confusion that is in the human heart,” he said. “When people are fuming, they are zeroed in on justice. Mercy is abhorrent.”
Read the full story: “Mother forgives drunk driver after crash killed her son.”
