Nature is Forgiving

Recently I have been reading articles about forgiveness. From the scientific and spiritual viewpoint it seems that forgiveness is important for health of mind, body and soul. Going back to nature I started looking around for forgiveness in nature and in particular in the garden. An example came up in the nightly news today. There was a story about how certain Asian Elephants are becoming endangered due to the American thirst for coffee. The American need for plenty of cheap coffee has persons clearing and planting coffee bean trees on the land of the elephants. The elephants often end up tramping the coffee bean growing area and thus are shot by the farmers. Over dinner tonight my adult son jokingly said that the elephants were trampling the coffee trees to get back at the liberals sitting around coffee houses in New York City drinking coffee and solving the problems of the world. I reminded him that elephants were too smart to do such a stupid thing but were just reclaiming their land. Elephants might not forget but they, like most things in nature, do not hold resentments and grudges. In fact the forgiving nature of the elephants was one of the reasons they were becoming extinct.

A garden or farm is like that. You may use the land to the point of the exhaustion of its natural resources but if you let it be or rotate crops the land will renew itself and become fruitful once again. The land or garden holds no grudges and resentments. Another example would be a forest. It may be burned down by human error or greed, yet, if left to itself, it will grow back better than it was before.

The Growing Power way of growing, using waste to build worm-enriched soil, is an example of nature going beyond forgiveness and actually using the waste and leftovers of its destruction to give back new life.

We humans have a much tougher time with forgiveness than land or the elephants. We often remember and resent what has been done to us in the past or what we have done to others. A friend just came back from retreat and was telling me how once again he had told the priest how he had reconciled the past and received forgiveness from those he had hurt. The priest ask him if had forgiven himself for his past deeds. That question made him stop and think. Forgiving others is hard enough but forgiving oneself really is tough.

Forgiveness may be natural to nature and to us but it is not a big thing in our culture. When some years ago the Amish community forgave the family and the person who had shot some young girls in school, people were surprised. Our culture seems to seek revenge — be it on a country, ethnic group or individual. The USA is the only country in the so called ‘Western civilized world’, that still has the death penalty, the ultimate revenge.

Forgiveness, where are you now that we need you?

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