Forgiveness is one of the most astonishing qualities found in our universe.

As he experiences the universe, Joseph Jaworski offers this first principle:

‘There is an open and emergent quality to the universe.’*

Jaworski continues to describe this openness: ‘We can’t find a cause or reason for this emergent quality, but as we experience it again and again, we see that the universe offers infinite possibility.’*

This got me thinking.

Forgiveness is a really important connector to this “infinite possibility.”

We can live in need of forgiveness, always burdened but never free: ‘if a society does not have an apparatus for forgiveness, then its members are fated to live forever with the consequences of any violation’**

Or we can live as though we don’t need forgiveness, which may lead to repeating the violation over and over.

Forgiveness, though, makes a third future possible.  Forgiveness is not one thing, but many; it is infinitely imaginative, mirroring a universe with “infinite possibility.”

Try it out.  Give it and receive it often, in diverse and creative ways.

(*From Jospeh Jaworski’s Source.)
(**Walter Brueggemann referring to Hannah Arendt’s belief about forgiveness, in The Prophetic Imagination.)