Write injuries in sand,
Kindness in marble.

What keeps us from forgiving the people who hurt us is that we have not yet healed the wounds they inflicted. Forgiveness is the gift at the end of the healing process. We find it waiting for us when we reach a point where we stop expecting "them" to pay for what they did or make it up to us in some way. Yet, forgiveness is moving on. It is recognizing that we have better things to do with our life and then doing them.

A few old trees remain standing in the pasture that had been the schoolyard. In addition, five young evergreens now grow along a nearby fence row... They rise heavenward, quietly pointing to the Divine Grace that somehow enabled the community to forgive within hours of the violence.

Blessed are those who have confessed
  their erring ways,
  who have asked for forgiveness.
Blessed are those whose burdens
  have been lifted,
  who are able to respond with love.
For the Beloved walks with them and
  speaks to them in the Silence;
With mercy and compassion, they
  are held in Love's heart;
All who are at one with Love will
  live in peace and harmony.

In our society, forgiveness is often seen as weakness. People who forgive those who have hurt them or their family are made to look as if they really don't care about their loved ones. But forgiveness is tremendous strength. It is the action of someone who refuses to be consumed by hatred and revenge.

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany,but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we all have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you as you are and finding in you an unexpected goodness.

Forgiveness is twice blessed. It frees the one forgiven from guilt and you from bitterness. Forgiveness sheds light on the subject. It lets love, instead of judgment, shine in. Judgment curdles the soul; forgiveness invites your spirit to burst into bloom.

Giving forth positive energy in the name of blessing instead of giving forth negative energy in the form of cursing is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future. To forgive is the only way to permanently change the world.