Saturday Small Worship Groups                              Pacific NW Quarterly Meeting, April 2022

"After pointing out that forgiveness is not forgetting what happened or acting as if things are just the same as before the offense, [Richard] Foster suggests that:

‘forgiveness means that the power of love that holds us together is greater than the power of the offense that separates us. …In forgiveness, we are releasing our offenders so that they are no longer bound to us. In a very real sense we are freeing them to receive God’s grace. ...

In order for this to happen, forgiveness means that I am no longer bound by what happened to me; the offense no longer exerts power over me.”   

 —Connie McPeak Green, and Martha Paxson Grundy. Matthew 18: Wisdom for Living in Community. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill Publications, 2008. Print, 27
 

1.           When does forgiveness—of self, others, God, Reality—come more easily for you, and when is it more challenging?

2.           Reflect on your own willingness to forgive or be forgiven. What helps? What hinders?

3.           What images, actions, or words assist your ability to "release into the Spirit" ("forgive")?

 

 

 

Sunday Small Worship Groups                                Pacific NW Quarterly Meeting, April 2022

"So often, forgiveness is thought of as a kind of absolution granted from a position on high. Such forgiveness isn’t forgiveness at all. It condescends from a prideful sense of being right and clings to—insists on—the other’s being wrong. It cannot be called forgiveness if it perceives division, superiorities and inferiorities, and defends the state of affairs from which all the trouble began. True forgiveness is another face of reconciliation, peace making or binding up whatever has been broken in the world".    

—Patricia Loring, Listening spirituality vol II: corporate spiritual practice among friends. S.l.: Openings Press, 2009,  58.

1.           How do you experience forgiveness as "another face" of peacemaking? How do you wish you did?

2.           How does your Quaker meeting practice forgiveness as part of being a "people of peace"?  How might it do so? What might be yours to forgive or be forgiven in your Quaker community?