I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, about what it means for someone who has wronged another to have the audacity to ask that person to put down his rightful claim of vengeance. It's not in our nature to forgive, yet somehow it is in our nature to ask for forgiveness. We are programmed to ask for a miracle, for someone to overlook that which is evil in us in order to repair what was once good. Dag Hammarskjold wrote:

"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again."

What a wonderful, terrible thing to know that we all have that ability to create or deny a miracle to those we love, or at times to those we don't even know. It is wonderful because there are so few ways to give, with our fumbling, sinful hands, something of everlasting value to another human being. It is terrible because when we deny it, especially to someone who loves us, we turn our backs on the opportunity to be, if only for a fleeting moment, like a Savior.

So those of you who are harboring a grievance against someone you love, no matter how much you are in the right, no matter how much you are hurt, remember that to which your love has committed you:

    "What power has love but forgiveness?
     In other words
     by its intervention 
     what has been done 
     can be undone. 
     What good is it otherwise?"

               * William Carlos Williams