On forgiveness:
Forgiveness is the cleaning of the soul. Forgiveness, then, truly is next to godliness.
Reasons to forgive:
- Belief that people can and do improve.
- Belief that you can heal from the hurt they caused you. The hurt one holds onto is inversely proportional to their ability to forgive. True, deep healing creates forgiveness; forgiveness creates true, deep healing.
- Forgiveness is growth. Anything else is stagnation and decay — to look backward instead of forward.
- Love feels better than hate. To forgive is to let oneself love again. Forgiveness is the dissolution of protective walls of scar tissue — walls that seek defense, but only prevent the healing salve of loving connection from being applied.
- Forgiveness redeems not only the one being forgiven, but also the one doing the forgiving. Who truly suffers when one holds onto gnawing, biting anger? What truly is anger but a foolish attempt to deny the soft underbelly common to all humanity, that space containing the hurt we’d prefer to ignore? What is the anger but an attempt to delude ourselves that we still hold some semblance of power in reaction to our deep feelings of helplessness and powerlessness brought on by being human and having emotions at all? How terribly vulnerable that is. And, oh, how we grasp at straws to escape that reality, scrambling to forge flimsy rafts on chaotic seas, doomed to be swallowed by the deep at the first sign of a storm.
Forgiveness is the holiest of holies, the highest of altars, the Philosopher’s Stone, Holy Grail, and Elixir of Life. Forgiveness is the greatest of strengths, forgiveness is the beauty of beauties. Forgiveness is all the strength of Mars, the most brave and knightly of warriors. Forgiveness is the beauty of Venus, her high and sacred sweetness. Forgiveness is god and goddess made one.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 