Spring Break
A deeper look at forgiveness
Anne Marie Merline
Issue date: 11/3/09 Section: Opinion
How easily do you forgive other people? I began thinking about this idea for a column when I realized that I missed the deadline to submit a column three weeks ago. I apologized to my editor, and he shrugged it off and urged me to look at my absent-mindedness as a mini-vacation.
As I was thinking about this interaction of forgiveness, the concept once again came up in my junior seminar this semester, and it has brought me to teaching thoughts about forgiveness.
The second time I taught my course on Human Rights, almost two years ago, someone asked me how any one individual or ethnic group of people could forgive whole governments or whole cultural groups for atrocities committed against other humans.
My initial reaction was "I have no idea."
This was asked as I was screening films for the Tri Media Film Festival two springs ago; I was lucky enough to screen "Flowers of Rwanda," in which Tutsi survivors of the genocide travel the country showing films trying to find ways in which the surviving Tutsi and Hutu people can live together and progress without continued hatred.
How can humans move forward, peacefully, without hatred and understanding when 800,000 people of your culture are slaughtered because they are from a different culture?
This semester, I am leading a seminar about the Beat Generation and its possible links to the New Left and the Rise of the Conservative Movement.
Last week, we got into the discussion about the roles of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. We talked about The Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and their different methods of contributing to The Civil Rights Movement.
As middle class whites in the 21st century, it is impossible for us to put ourselves in the shoes of any person who lived during that time, especially someone who is black. We all, of course, applaud the peaceful and activist perspective of Dr. King, but I asked my students to put themselves in the shoes of someone who did advocate violence.
As I was thinking about this interaction of forgiveness, the concept once again came up in my junior seminar this semester, and it has brought me to teaching thoughts about forgiveness.
The second time I taught my course on Human Rights, almost two years ago, someone asked me how any one individual or ethnic group of people could forgive whole governments or whole cultural groups for atrocities committed against other humans.
My initial reaction was "I have no idea."
This was asked as I was screening films for the Tri Media Film Festival two springs ago; I was lucky enough to screen "Flowers of Rwanda," in which Tutsi survivors of the genocide travel the country showing films trying to find ways in which the surviving Tutsi and Hutu people can live together and progress without continued hatred.
How can humans move forward, peacefully, without hatred and understanding when 800,000 people of your culture are slaughtered because they are from a different culture?
This semester, I am leading a seminar about the Beat Generation and its possible links to the New Left and the Rise of the Conservative Movement.
Last week, we got into the discussion about the roles of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. We talked about The Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and their different methods of contributing to The Civil Rights Movement.
As middle class whites in the 21st century, it is impossible for us to put ourselves in the shoes of any person who lived during that time, especially someone who is black. We all, of course, applaud the peaceful and activist perspective of Dr. King, but I asked my students to put themselves in the shoes of someone who did advocate violence.
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mfelten86
Matthew
posted 11/05/09 @ 11:56 AM MST
I really like this piece, forgiveness can be a very powerful thing. I think that today we do forgive people over little things so easy, but when it becomes hard to forgive someone, like a parent, we ignore it until it eats us from the inside out. (Continued…)
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