The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond Tutu & Mpho Tutu

Author:Desmond Tutu & Mpho Tutu [Tutu, Desmond]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Choosing to Forgive

After we tell our stories and name our hurts, the next step is to grant forgiveness. Sometimes this choice happens quickly and sometimes it happens slowly, but inevitably it is how we move forward along the Fourfold Path. We choose forgiveness because it is how we find freedom and keep from remaining trapped in an endless loop of telling our stories and naming our hurts. It is how we move from victim to hero. A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others. Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future. A victim has nothing to give and no choices to make. A hero has the strength and ability to be generous and forgiving, and the power and freedom that come from being able to make the choice to grant forgiveness.

In some cases, we find forgiveness after a long time, and sometimes forgiveness finds us even in the midst of our grief. For Kia Scherr, learning of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, where her husband and thirteen-year-old daughter were visiting, forgiveness was the last thing on her mind:

What do you do when the worst thing that could possibly happen actually happens? In November of 2008 my husband, Alan, and daughter, Naomi, traveled to Mumbai for a meditation retreat at the Oberoi Hotel.

On November 14 I said good-bye to Alan and Naomi at the Dulles airport in Virginia. We kept in touch through e-mail and phone calls over the next week, and on November 24 I had my last conversation with them. Naomi had just gotten her nose pierced and had sent photos through the e-mail. She was so excited as I shared the news that her test scores had come in for her entrance examination to a top girls boarding school in New York. She had scored 95 percent overall and was full of joy when I told her the news. Alan and I excitedly discussed all of this, and our last words to each other were “I love you.”

The next day I got on a plane to Tampa, Florida, to visit my parents, sons, brothers, and sister for our Thanksgiving holiday. When I checked my e-mail the following day, there were no messages from Alan or Naomi. Later that afternoon the phone rang. It was the managing director of Synchronicity Foundation, which was sponsoring the meditation retreat in Mumbai. She told me to turn on the news right away because the Oberoi Hotel was being attacked by terrorists. I dropped the phone in disbelief. For the next two days I watched in horror as the terror attack in Mumbai went on and on and on. I had no idea where Alan and Naomi were and prayed that they were safe in their rooms. Friends and family called, joined our prayers, and called upon their friends to pray with us.

Because Alan and Naomi were unaccounted for, my eldest son, Aaron, sent their photos to CNN, in case they were unconscious somewhere in Mumbai with no identification on them.

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