Be the Bridge by LaTasha Morrison & Daniel Hill & Jennie Allen

Author:LaTasha Morrison & Daniel Hill & Jennie Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Extending and Receiving Bridge-Building Forgiveness

In our Be the Bridge groups, we hope to cultivate spaces of forgiveness. After all, we’re asking members—people of all colors—to examine their complicity in racism, and if there’s no room for forgiveness, we’ll never get the sorts of honest confessions needed to create long-term healing and wholeness.

By the grace of God and through a great deal of practice, members of our Be the Bridge groups have willingly gone to great lengths to extend and receive forgiveness. And through that, many have been set free. Here are just a few examples.

Brooke Park confessed that she’d often been dismissive of the experiences of people of color and that she’d given “the system”—police, government officials, people in positions of power—the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the best of the person who was victimized. She repented of using her white privilege to ignore things or opt out when witnessing the truth got tough. She confessed to the group and sought forgiveness for being silent in instances when she felt she should have spoken up. Did the other members of her group forgive her? Without hesitation.

Janna Jensen confessed that her ancestors dehumanized, kidnapped, murdered, tortured, raped, and lynched people of color. And though she hadn’t participated in these atrocities directly, she’d learned to take a more communal view of sin. She confessed her family’s racism, spoke it aloud, all while looking into the dark-brown eyes of my dear friends. She stated, “It was harder to say than I thought it would be, probably because I am still fighting the internalized individualism and ‘innocence’ of whiteness. But I needed to say it, and it was freeing. I was able to forgive myself and others through this process.” There were tears. My sisters extended forgiveness to her even though the weight of her words was so heavy.

Corregan Brown shared with our online group the unfiltered truth about his own journey through forgiveness:

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