Tagged: “Communities”

How can you create a forgiving community for oppressed people? Don’t you first have to validate the injustices by solving them? Forgiveness without such validity seems weak.

One can validate oppression by acknowledging it and calling it what it is: unfair.  One can own one’s legitimate anger over the oppression.  Yet, if one waits to actually solve the injustice before forgiving, then those who are oppressing win twice: once with original and ongoing oppression and second by having the oppressed people living under a constant state of unhealthy anger or resentment. That resentment, over time, might be so strong as to destroy individuals and families within that oppressed community.  Forgiveness without a correction of the injustice at the very least solves that one problem of destructive resentment.

Learn more at Healing Hearts, Building Peace.

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You are Invited to a Live Benefit Concert on Nov. 11

The Arts @ First United Methodist Church, Madison presents…

    Live on Stage from Around the World:
 90 Minutes of World Class Performances

2:00 pm
Sunday, November 11, 2018
First United Methodist Church
203 Wisconsin Avenue
Madison, Wisconsin
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Join us for a live concert featuring these internationally-respected performers:
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The Kat Trio, formally known as The Ekaterinburg (Russia) Classical Trio, is composed of Victoria Gorbich (violin), Vladislav Gorbich (Clarinet), and Joseph Ross (pianist). The trio’s unique Russian arrangements and seamless transcriptions of timeless melodies feature classical works, well-known inspirational songs, and even American pop standards, including Scott Joplin’s rags.

Click this link to hear The Kat Trio perform Joplin’s hit tune “The Easy Winners.”.

 

The Varshavski-Shapiro Piano Duo is comprised of pianists  Stanislava Varshavski (born in Kharkov, Ukraine) and Diana Shapiro (born in Moscow, Russia), who began playing together in 1998 after meeting at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy in Israel. After studying in Israel and the US, both pianists completed Doctoral degree studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011.
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Click here to listen to The Varshavski-Shapiro Piano Duo perform three of their piano classics.

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 is a classical guitarist from central Florida who has studied and performed around the world and who is now based in Madison, WI, where he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Classical Guitar Performance in 2010. Miles has just returned from his performance at the Classical Guitar Retreat at the Cathedral of the Isles, on the isle of Cumbrae, in Scotland.

Click here to see and hear Miles play six of his classical arrangements.
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Concert Master of Ceremonies will be Norman Gilliland who began hosting classical music broadcasts on Wisconsin Public Radio in the mid-1970s. Gilliland has also been the narrator for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra’s popular summer series “Concerts on the Square” for the past 28 years.
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Meet the artists at a hospitality reception following the concert.
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…..Proceeds from this concert will support:
The First United Methodist Food Pantry
and
The International Forgiveness Institute

$10 donation suggested.


For more information contact:
Jonathan Little Management / JL Presents
Mobile: 608-219-1077
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Is there such a thing as Political Forgiveness, for example, to handle border disputes?

Yes, and this is sometimes called group forgiveness.  Group forgiveness is different from one person forgiving another.  In the latter, a person can change feeling, thoughts, and behaviors toward an offending other.  Groups do not have feeling and thoughts (individuals within groups have the feeling and thoughts).  So, only actions are part of group forgiveness such as proclamations of forgiveness or establishing norms within the group to try to be kind toward the other group as justice is pursued.

Here is the abstract of a journal article on this issue:

Enright, R.D., Lee, Y.R., Hirshberg, M.J., Litts, B.K., Schirmer, E.B., Irwin, A.J., Klatt, J., Hunt, J., & Song, J.Y. (2016).  Examining group forgiveness: Conceptual and empirical issues.  Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 22, 153-162.

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People in Chicago again are protesting the gun violence there. Would implementing IFI’s Forgiveness curriculum into all schools & Forgiveness Therapy into prison, anger management, drug and marriage programs help with lowering the violence there? If so what else would this help in Chicago for instance lower bullying, cyberbullying, suicides, etc?

Your insights are very insightful and important.  Yes, we agree with you that IFI’s forgiveness curriculum in all or at least many schools would reduce student anger. Once in their mid-teens, many of the adolescents should have their anger reduced and not at a level that might lead to violence.  Forgiveness therapy in the prison system also should reduce anger so that it is not a motivator to hurt others.  Forgiveness therapy in drug rehabilitation programs and in marriage programs should help reduce stress in those who do this kind of work.

The key issue is not whether or not forgiveness education and forgiveness therapy would work.  Instead, that key issue is this: How can we get the attention of the decision makers in schools, prisons, drug rehabilitation units, and marriage counseling centers so that these forgiveness programs are given a chance to be implemented?  In our experience, leaders need to see the efficacy of forgiveness for it to move forward.  How can we get the attention of the leaders?
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Forgiveness, like Dr. Enright’s Model, should be Cultivated on National and International Scales

According to an editorial in the February issue of an international humanities journal, forgiveness interventions like Dr. Robert Enright’s 20 Step Process Model,  should be employed on a much broader basis and, in fact, national leaders should be assessing “when or how it might be appropriate to cultivate forgiveness on national and international scales.”

The influential American Journal of Public Health, continuously published for more than 100 years, further editorialized that:

“If forgiveness is strongly related to health, and being wronged is a common experience, and interventions. . . are available and effective, then one might make the case that forgiveness is a public health issue. . .

“Because being wronged is common, and because the effects of forgiveness on health are substantial, forgiveness should perhaps be viewed as a phenomenon that is not only of moral,  theological, and relational significance, but of public health importance as well.”


“Forgiveness promotes health and wholeness; it is important to public health.”      AJPH


The editorial cites Dr. Enright’s Process Model (also called his Four Phases of Forgiveness) as one of only two “prominent intervention classes” now available. “Interventions using this model have been shown to be effective with groups as diverse as adult incest survivors, parents who have adopted special needs children, and inpatients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction.

“Forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and hostility; reduced nicotine dependence and substance abuse; higher positive emotion; higher satisfaction with life; higher social support; and fewer self-reported health symptoms. The beneficial emotional regulation (results in) forgiveness being an alternative to maladaptive  psychological responses like rumination and suppression.”

Read the rest of this compelling editorial: Is Forgiveness a Public Health Issue?

Learn more about Dr. Enright’s Four Phases of Forgiveness


 

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