{"id":85,"date":"2009-10-12T11:25:27","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T18:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2009-10-12T11:25:41","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T18:25:41","slug":"englands-discussion-on-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"England&#8217;s Discussion on Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Marina Cantacuzino founder of <a mce_href=\"http:\/\/www.theforgivenessproject.com\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theforgivenessproject.com\/\">The Forgiveness Project <\/a>has written an article in <a mce_href=\"http:\/\/women.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/women\/the_way_we_live\/article6868340.ece\" href=\"http:\/\/women.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/women\/the_way_we_live\/article6868340.ece\">London&#8217;s The Times on-line newspaper October 12, 2009 <\/a>about forgiveness and the case of an Irish activist who planted a bomb 25 years ago that killed five people and left others seriously injured.&nbsp; The man served 14 years in prison (was sentenced to life), but released as part of the <a mce_href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belfast_Agreement\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belfast_Agreement\">Good Friday Agreement <\/a>also known as the Belfast Agreement, which was part of the English and Northern Ireland peace process.&nbsp; The article is an in depth discussion of forgiveness, something that we typically ignore in the United States where retribution rules.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>My comments to Ms. Cantacuzino&#8217;s article are:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thank you for this insightful article and the comments on this difficult subject.&nbsp; I live in the United States where we don&#8217;t have these types of discussions.&nbsp; We rarely forgive people who commit crimes.&nbsp; Instead we imprison over 2 million and spend more money on that than on higher education.&nbsp; Sadly, in my own state we only provide public education to children 3 and a half days a week.&nbsp; Yet we spend about $200 million a year on corrections (a sum that is sure to increase with the decrease in education).<\/p>\n<p>As a victim of a violent crime myself I agree with Desmond Tutu, forgiveness is for healing.&nbsp; For me, it was not something that I did simply to absolve the man who almost murdered me.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>As Mark Nepo states: &#8220;Forgiveness has deeper rewards than excusing someone for how they have hurt us.&nbsp; The deeper healing comes in the exchange of our resentments for inner freedom.&nbsp; At last, the wound, even if never acknowledged by the other person, can heal, and our life continue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to the day when here in the United States can have more discussion on forgiveness and its power.&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marina Cantacuzino founder of The Forgiveness Project has written an article in London&#8217;s The Times on-line newspaper October 12, 2009 about forgiveness and the case of an Irish activist who planted a bomb 25 years ago that killed five people and left others seriously injured.&nbsp; The man served 14 years in prison (was sentenced to life), but released as part of the Good Friday Agreement also known as the Belfast Agreement, which was part of&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}