By Molly Layton
Family Therapy Networker
I opened the door to my car, swinging my feet out onto the asphalt driveway. Suddenly I found myself out of balance, swaying into the gravel path edged by the shadowy yew bushes as if I were going to spill, chin first, onto the ground. I righted abruptly, jerking up marionette-style, and heard at that moment-with a sort of auditory hindsight-that I had been screaming, moaning really, but low and powerful, like a train coming through. I had never felt a sound like that before. My husband had just left me, suddenly, mysteriously, and the sound in my body came from the strange rift his leaving had made.
Of all the parts of my life that I had just lost-the two of us nested in bed at night, our working hip-to-hip in the narrow kitchen, the family's joking after dinner, elbows sprawled around the plates-the most startling loss was this, the crack in the spirit, the gyroscope tumping over, the compass points scattered.
When I was a child daydreaming in the cool retreat of a Sunday school classroom, the act of forgiving other people, no matter how bad they hurt you, was as surely a sign of rightness as the chicken and cream gravy waiting for us back home. But there came a time, this time, when I found myself so stunned with anger and suffering that the transcendent relief of forgiveness seemed as unreachable as heaven.
J. Ruth Gendler
The Book of Qualities
Forgiveness is a strong woman, tender and earthy and direct...... Sometimes the city authorities and officials don't want her within their gates; but if the people want her there enough, she always manages to find a way inside.
Forgiveness brings gifts wherever she goes. Simple ones, a three-stranded twig with leaves turning yellow, a belt she wove on an inkle loom, a little song that grows inside you and changes everything. She brought me a silver ring from the South with a pale stone, pink with a hint of brown. When I had asthma, she taught me how to breathe.
return to main page