Lyndon Harris, a pastor in New York, builds ‘Gardens of Forgiveness’ around the world to help promote the power of reconciliation.
“Not to forgive is like drinking a glass of poison and waiting for your enemies to die.” Nelson Mandela
The Christian Science Monitor has a column called “People Making A Difference”. It is one the primary reasons I read the Monitor.
The most recent article is a the story of Lyndon Harris, now Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in New York’s West Village.
On that fateful day, 9/11/01, he was the pastor of St. Paul’s Chapel, a 200-year-old sanctuary where George Washington, not far from the fallen towers.
Far too many people seem to have forgot the undefeatable spirit demonstrated by Pastor Harris, and all the men and women of New York. Tragedies will happen, people will suffer and die, the human spirit never will.
From the article, by Marilyn Jones:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0727/p07s01-lign.html
After the twin towers fell, Father Harris spent the morning evacuating children from the nursery school at Trinity Church Wall Street – two blocks from the crash site. As he prayed and worked, he had no idea how dramatically his life would change.
“All the children and their parents working nearby survived. For Harris the day went by in a blur. He spent most of it on the street, helping. The next morning, still dazed, he arrived at little St. Paul’s Chapel, just up the street from Trinity. Ashes covered the cemetery out back, but the 200-year-old sanctuary where George Washington once worshiped was intact.
As the newly appointed priest in charge of St. Paul’s, Harris made a decision. With his superiors at Trinity out of town, he spontaneously opened the chapel to the hundreds of workers at ground zero. For eight months, St. Paul’s became a refuge to firefighters, workers, heavy-equipment operators, and police officers.
Open 24 hours a day, St. Paul’s served more than a half million meals. Counselors, musicians, and an untold number of volunteers from around the world helped. The grimy faces and worn bodies of the workers showed the strain of their bleak work. But the smiles and uplifted waves to news cameras also revealed how profoundly touched these workers felt by the outpouring of love. Cards, letters, posters, quilts, and pictures hung from every fence, surface, pew, and wall of the “little chapel that stood.”
Once emergency operations ceased, St. Paul’s closed for inspection, and Harris faced the realities of life in a hierarchical organization. “The heights of joy I was blessed to share while serving others at St. Paul’s Chapel were soon matched by the depths of my despair,” he recalls. “Internal divisions concerning the direction of the ministries at St. Paul’s boiled over. I wound up resigning.
Over the next three years, Harris’s life spiraled down. His lungs had been compromised by exposure to the air at ground zero. He lost his house through foreclosure, and his marriage ended in divorce. “PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and depression began taking over my life. I was bitter and resentful,” he says.
At one point, a good friend listened to Harris’s woes. But rather than commiserating, he threw down a challenge: What if you could forgive? Harris hung up the phone. But then he got to thinking: “Of course I had to forgive!” he says. “I’m a Christian pastor! It’s part of my job description.” He called his friend back and told him he’d give it a try.
That decision marked a turning point. Finally, Harris says, he could hear these words attributed to Nelson Mandela: “Not to forgive is like drinking a glass of poison and waiting for your enemies to die.” Harris admits he drank deeply of that poison – mostly, he says, “because it tasted so good.”
Out of the ashes of his despair, forgiveness began to bloom. He spent two years as a consultant to The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine (Episcopal) in New York City. As his health returned, he traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to visit Alexandra Asseily. She had begun a movement to plant a Garden of Forgiveness in her beloved Lebanon after its civil war, which claimed more than 300,000 lives. The greatest gift to one’s children, Ms. Asseily teaches, is to become a better ancestor. And that, she says, is done through forgiveness. ”
Web Site of “The Garden Of Frogiveness”
7 comments
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July 28, 2009 at 12:38 am
lovewillbringustogether
Pastor Haris said something i believe speaks directly to the reason forgiveness is so essential to those who wish to live a good Healthy life.
“I was bitter and resentful,” he says.
The bitterness that we hold against some one (or thing – such as a religion, or God) will taint every single aspect of our life, our mind and our hearts.
Only through True Forgiveness – a genuine feeling of love, or initiated from our own love within us, is capable of ‘sweetening’ that bitterness and allowing us to live the life we are to achieve in our short time here without the sour taste in our mouths that spreads like a poison throughout our society and the people with whom we make contact.
It is by no means ever an ‘easy’ thing to achieve – some things seem unfogiveable – but if we are to ever overcome our own ‘negativity’ that holds us and all others ‘down’ we are to always try.
The Spirit demands and commands it. 😉
<B
July 28, 2009 at 6:56 pm
edfromct
You are 100% right that only through “True Forgivness”, a genuine feeling of love, can we get past the bitterness that can “taint” our lives.
1. Feeling bitterness, hate, is not good for our own mental health. Time spent feeling this way is time wasted on negative, non-productive, thinking.
2. The more we can understand why someone else acted the way the did, the better we can take some action to correct whatever damage resulted from that action. This requires us to see events from the other person’s perspective.
This certainly has never been easy for me, but I think as I get older I am becoming better at it.
July 28, 2009 at 11:41 pm
lovewillbringustogether
Ed – regarding point 2.
I do agree that to the degree we can see things from another person’s ( the one who we are to forgive) perspective the better our ability to forgive may become, it is my understanding that any individual’s personal ability to ‘rationalise’ and reason is not identical to that of another human by reason of our differing experiences and things each of us have learned. ( including our behaviours).
As a result it can at times be literally impossible to completely ‘understand’ the other’s perspective and rationale.
In those cases it may actually be impossible to forgive a person their actions to us or those we care strongly about and so not be able to fuly forgive them.
This is where i believe we are to seek the ability to forgive from somewhere ‘outside’ (or deeply inside?) ourselves – when God’s Will allows us the opportunity to heal ourselves through complete forgiveness of ourself and of someone else.
<B
July 29, 2009 at 12:28 am
edfromct
I believe that we all do have the capability of complete forgiveness. God’s will to me is more of an excuse(?) to not work hard enough at the problem ourselves. I understand why so many have lost faith in mankind, and themselves. However we need to take responsibility for our actions. We are responsible, not anyone else, not gods.
July 28, 2009 at 8:02 am
Indian Lake Papa
There are a lot of things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom Ed, but the ability and willingness to forgive is one of those special God given traits. Mama gets lots of practice with me. Her ability to forgive, amazes me.
July 28, 2009 at 7:05 pm
edfromct
We all do need someone like Mama who has the patience, and understanding, to forgive us.
We all need to learn how to forgive or the bitterness that Pastor Harris spoke of will taint, and ruin our own lives.
July 30, 2009 at 2:26 am
lovewillbringustogether
“I believe that we all do have the capability of complete forgiveness.”
i agree that anyone is CAPABLE, however so few ever achieve it, be they believers in God or not. God’s will is not the excuse non-believers use to not achieve complete forgiveness for all wrongs (or a serious wrong) done to them and i don’t believe it is fair of you to assume that believers use it in the way you suggest – an ‘excuse’ not to ‘try’.
Many people who have suffered a great deal at the hands of another (be it intentional or accidental) find it enormously hard – to the point of it seeming to not be ‘worth’ the effort to ‘try’ and continue to try against the long term ingraining of bitterness the wrong causes in them and can so ‘give up’ rather than continuing to put effort and resources into ‘fighting’ the bitterness within.
Having the Will of God to rely upon for a time is capable of offering the sufferer sufficient ‘room’ to get away from the unsuccessful struggle we put ourselves through.
Having the Faith and leadership of an eternally forgiving and loving God who cares for us all can also provide us with a good role model of how we are to behave and not follow the examples we see all around us of people giving up and not succeeding in their efforts to be forgiving. as in Israel for example and many similar places throughout human history. The ungodly natures of some in Northern Ireland who claim to be Protestant Christian or Catholic Christian is just appalling as an example of how human nature overcomes His Nature within us in some society’s and individuals.
If we don’t accept our own ‘responsibility’ and find excuses rather than examples to follow, that is up to us, but it is not the exclusive province of believers in God’s Will.
Neither is: “Oh it is just God’s Will” necessarily an excuse for those who say it to give up – it may however give them just enough room to find the solution to their suffering and to come to forgiveness ‘in time’ (with God’s Help) 😉
Something many non-believers may never have as a means of distancing themselves from the great pain that paralyses action or prevents us from seeing the way ‘out’ – the way of total loving forgiveness, for others as well as for ourselves, and out of the guilt we may feel inside.
God is NOT ‘responsible’ for our actions (other than through ourselves who are all a part of God) – i believe most strongly however that He ensures we all bear the consequences, good, bad or indifferent, to our acts.
No-one of us ever ‘escapes’ the consequences – Ultimately.
<B