Crushed Violet

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
-Jesus the Christ


Whether one believes Jesus a fraud or God; myth or fact, these, His final words, cry out down the centuries as the highest and noblest of all utterances. Few of us, including the world’s greatest thinkers and philosophers have ascended to such heights or plumbed such depths. Though we greet great forgiveness with great applause and recognition, most of us find it nearly impossible to live it.

What we do understand is vengeance; the inverse of forgiveness. It Is our all-too-human response to physical wounding, emotional suffering, property loss, hurt feelings and even of being short-changed at the cash register. Movies and television glorify, justify and temporarily satisfy us with the balancing of justice-an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. But the story always stops just short of the true ending. What the story does not show is the emptiness of revenge: the loss of integrity, of morality, of humanness. Retribution is foisted on us by a bankrupt society which itself has no conscience or values. It seeks to shape us in its own image; a pale parody of a real human.

So what is forgiveness? Is it denying a feeling of anger at the wrong? Is it letting justice slide and the perpetrator running free and consequenceless? Is it bringing the wrong into memory?

A pastor was wronged. His trusted comrade, in a public meeting, denounced him, calling him a fraud and alleging many untruths about him. The minister was stunned. He did not defend himself; a defense would only have served the purposes of the accuser. He stumbled off the platform, condemned in the eyes of his congregation. He wandered down the street, crying out “Why?” into the silence. Gradually, the words of Christ “Forgive them,” began to penetrate his rage. His anger did not abate, but he began to cry out “I forgive, I forgive.”

Over the following months, the forgiveness became real to his shattered mind. He truly accepted and loved the betrayer.

Then, a year later, the erstwhile friend called him in deepest distress. He himself had been betrayed. The forgiver invited his betrayer into his home and ministered to him for a year—true forgiveness.

From this and other such incidents, including being forgiven myself, I have formulated this definition of forgiveness: Forgiveness is consciously absorbing into oneself, the consequence justly due the perpetrator.

Christ’s murderers deserved death. He took the death. The minister would have been justified in accusing the accuser and working for his ousting. Instead, he loved the man back to full health. I have experienced this kind of forgiveness. It is terrifyingly real; it strikes at the very root cause of all betrayals, poverty, hunger and injustice-the selfish heart of mankind.

Giving and forgiveness; each is an act of generosity flowing from a generous heart. One is a tangible gift; the other an intangible but immeasurably greater gift.

Mark Twain said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance of a violet shed on the heel that crushed it.” In mind's eye, I see one fragile flower growing amid the random flora of a forest glade. A careless hiker, fully shod in hiking boot with swinging walking stick, striding oblivious of his footfall. Just there his heel crushes the flower, releasing onto his boot heel the aroma of its stored and ready perfume of forgiveness. May I so live; armed with forgiveness ready to spread its perfume at each, all and all provocation. Would I truly live that way; would we all live that way, what a happy world we would live in. Forgiveness as a norm would soon destroy poverty and injustice; the intangible would beget the tangible for a world of wounds and a world of need.


11/23/11