When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.

The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.

He invited his white jailer to attend his inauguration as an honored guest, the first of many gestures he would make in his spectacular way, showing his breathtaking magnanimity and willingness to forgive. He would be a potent agent for the reconciliation he

When you truly empathize with someone, you have to take into account all the things that make that person who they are.

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean.

If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

When the norm is decency, other virtues can thrive: integrity, honesty, compassion, kindness, and trust.

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

So the person who has been forgiven much has much room to forgive others.

The Holy Spirit has filled my heart too much for me to hold that grudge against you. Our God is too big for us to hate others.