I had a lovely Easter, away with members of my extended family, at a conference. I was on the tech team, learning new skills such as how to operate a semi-professional video camera. Not something I ever expected to learn to do, but when you’re rostered on to do that, its sink or swim. I think I managed ok!
One of the talks at the conference touched on forgiveness. I have often struggled with what forgiving someone actually looks like. It was suggested that forgiveness is different to pardon. While pardon means it is as though the act never happened, forgiveness means there are still consequences, but the forgiver turns from being “against” the transgressor, to “for” the transgressor. It was a new idea for me, and very helpful.
It is now Easter school holidays, and I am squirreling myself away and getting stuck into preparing for next week’s Beating Around the Bush.
I am really looking forward to the Stitchers Fair on Wednesday, where the plan is that my new book, Portuguese Whitework, will be launched! However, it hasn’t been finalised yet, so I have no idea of the details. I’m rather in the hands of the organisers there!
On Thursday and Friday I’ll be teaching my Mountmellick Lily Cushion class. We will have lots of fun playing with stitches. I always enjoy teaching Mountmellick classes!
For those who will be at Beating Around the Bush next week, please do come and introduce yourself to me. I don’t want you to be shy – I WANT to meet you!
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Many years ago there was a terrible bomb in Northern Ireland that killed many people. On the news report that same day, the father of one of the victims said that he forgave the bombers. I was stunned and wondered how he could let them off so easily.
Later in life I decided I was going to forgive someone for something that had troubled me for most of my life. I realised then that forgiving others is not letting them off, it is lettuing yourself off all of the hate and anger that you carry otherwise.
By forgiving the bombers, that father was free to enjoy the love he had for his daughter and remember the joy of her rather than waste his energy hating those that had taken her from him.
Have a great time at Beating Around the Bush.
Carol, it is extremely interesting that you should mention this story. One of the speakers at the conference was from Belfast, and he told exactly the same story. It was an amazing example of forgiveness. Thanks for also sharing it with me.
For anyone else who is interested, the man’s name was Gordon Wilson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Wilson_%28peace_campaigner%29
I’m not sure I would consider that forgiveness lets someone off lightly. If they come to understand what they’ve done, I suspect that being forgiven might be very hard to accept..
Those thoughts/paradigm on pardon vs forgiveness certainly gives me something to think about….of course, like us all, I’ve wanted us all to ‘get over’ a particular situation but it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten what happened.