People who play golf sometimes take a \u201cmulligan.\u201d That\u2019s a fancy word for a do-over. If they make a bad shot, they can simply ignore what just happened and try once again, as if their mistake never happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we could take a mulligan in our daily lives? Imagine being able to call back a thoughtless comment or erase from everyone\u2019s memory some embarrassing moment. How helpful it would be, to simply call for a do-over and ignore what just happened\u2014and the consequences of what just happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadly, no one has figured out how to do that. Instead, when we say or do something that hurts another person, or when someone else says or does something that hurts us, we all have to live with the consequences. And often those consequences include resentment or a grudge that may last a long time. We may find it hard, if not impossible, to get past that moment and the feelings that it left us with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many spiritual traditions talk about forgiveness as a way of dealing with those situations. Someone has said that forgiveness is \u201ca way to stop living in the past.\u201d But it might be more accurate to say that forgiveness means \u201creleasing our desire for a different past.\u201d Because we can\u2019t go back and un-do whatever it was that was done. We can\u2019t re-write the script. We can\u2019t re-live those moments and do things differently. Forgiveness means we recognize that the terrible thing did in fact happen, and we cannot ignore it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But forgiveness also means that we work to heal our past. We open ourselves to receive the healing power of a greater perspective. Instead of focusing on how to reverse what happened in the past, or how to get even in the present, we embrace the possibility of a new future. We take whatever lesson is available from the experience, and we look ahead in the hope that we will do better and be better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if we have offended, we ask the other person to forgive us, to open the door to a new chapter in our relationship. If someone has offended us, we offer them that same gift. In some truly awful cases, the future that we look toward may not include that other person anymore. But even if that\u2019s the case, we can let go of the hurt and the anger and the resentment that we\u2019ve been carrying for so long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And ultimately, that\u2019s where the power of forgiveness is really found. As we forgive, or as we ask for and receive forgiveness, we can truly move on. We can step forward into the next chapter of life that await us. We can take the lessons of our past and put them to use, even as we face the challenges of the present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting a do-over might be a good thing in golf. But in the spiritual life, we would do better to accept what happened in our past and to seek or to grant forgiveness as a way of moving beyond it and into a new future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope that gives you some food for spiritual thought.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Larry Lindstrom has been the Multifaith Campus Chaplain at Sinclair since 2016. He provides programs on different faith traditions and encourages students, faculty, and staff to explore their spiritual journey. Lindstrom also serves the college as the liaison for the office of LGBTQ+ Support.\u00a0You can contact him at\u00a0<\/a>larry.lindstrom@sinclair.edu<\/a>.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People who play golf sometimes take a \u201cmulligan.\u201d That\u2019s a fancy word for a do-over. If they make a bad shot, they can simply ignore what just happened and try once again, as if their mistake never happened. Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we could take a mulligan in our daily lives? Imagine being able to call back a thoughtless comment or erase from everyone\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":33179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2102],"tags":[5283,3914,2331,5284],"class_list":["post-33178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","tag-food-for-spiritual-thought","tag-larry-lindstrom","tag-multifaith-campus-ministry","tag-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pexels-nadim-shaikh-7758348-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-8D8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33180,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33178\/revisions\/33180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}