INSPIRATION FOR DAILY LIVING
Overcoming hatred with compassion
"I've defended people who I believe are innocent and those who are apparently guilty. I see no situation where the death penalty is right, and none of the the terrible things I've seen and heard have shaken that belief. In fact, the worse the crime the simpler the explanation. We are all better than the worst 15 minutes of our lives ..... One of the people I admire most in the world is Lorilei Guillory, whose six-year old son, Jeremy, was murdered by a paedophile, Ricky Langley. At Ricky's retrial, having spent hours talking to him, she testified for the defence. She said in court: "Ricky Langley has been crying out for help since the day he was born. As I sit here I can hear the death cries of my child, but I can still hear that guy crying out for help." It's blindingly obvious to me that the happiest people are those who try to overcome hatred with compassion."
Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith (Sunday Times 16th April 2006)
Compassion
"What is compassion? It is the ability to enter into the mind and heart of another, to share his sorrow, to know him 'from within', thus giving rise to mercy and understanding. In the Revelations of Divine Love Julian of Norwich calls compassion a wound. It is so because human experience teaches us that if we love we suffer. It's therefore easier not to love, for if we do we give the other power to hurt us. The pains of those we love become our own, and the more we love the more we open ourselves to possible rejection, with its attendant emotions. If we love we 'feel' for others, and the more we widen our hearts to include all, the more we shall find ourselves bearing the sorrows of the world."
Elizabeth Ruth Obbard (Magnificat)
A wrongdoer is a valuable person
"Forgiveness recognises the wrongdoer as a person. He has done wrong, and about this there is no pretence. But this is not the whole truth about him. He is still of infinite value as a person, since every person is unique and irreplaceable by any other. Since he has so greatly injured himself by doing wrong, he is in special need of help, and help that can be rendered only by the one to whom he has done the wrong ... Forgiveness can spring only from a self-forgetfulness that is more concerned about another's wellbeing than about its own, and that longs for the renewal of fellowship even when fellowship has been flouted and destroyed by the wilful aggression of another."
Bishop Stephen Neill (A Genuinely Human Existence)
'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control' (Galatians:5:22-23)
From The Children’s Society:
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the casting aside of the barriers to love. It is the discounting of all things that come between people, restoring and reconciling relationships.
THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF
The five stages of grief do not always happen in this order and you may even skip one or two: