a deeper generosity

Forgiveness is one of the really difficult things in life.  
The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting
 either the hurt or the hurter.  When you forgive, some deeper, 
divine generosity takes you over.  When you can forgive, then you are free.  

When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you.  
If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered, 
you become incarcerated inside that feeling.  Only the the grace of forgiveness 
can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment.  It gives you a way out,
 because it places the conflict on a completely different level.  In a strange way,
 it keeps the whole conflict human.  You begin to see and understand the conditions, 
circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as she did.

...

Why are we so reluctant to leave our inner prisons?  
There is the security of the confinement and limitation that we know.  
We are often willing to endure the searing sense of forsakenness and distance
 which limitation brings rather than risking the
 step out into the field of the unknown. 

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

art by Leah Dorion