Field Guide to
What Really Matters:
Forgiveness

From my work with hospice patients over the years I learned long ago that forgiveness was one of the tasks that nearly every person struggled with at the end of life. I decided then that I would make forgiveness practices part of my daily spiritual routine because I recognized that it might take a long time to work through all the anger and resentment I was carrying.

 

One of the rituals I undertook was to create a Forgiveness Garden in my yard at our Colorado mountain home. I selected a spot underneath pines and aspens that had just the right amount of sun and shade and built an irregular border using heart-shaped rocks I had gathered while hiking over the years. 

 

At the local nursery I specifically selected flowers to represent the people and events I was working to forgive: purple lupine, yellow cinquefoil, violet larkspur, white and ice-blue columbines. At the back of the garden I placed a small statue of St. Francis, who I feel kinship with, to watch over the blossoms and birds. 

 

All summer long, I tended that garden as part of my forgiveness practice — pulling weeds, watering, and dead-heading spent blooms. A nearby bench became a place to sit and meditate as I spoke the words of Ho’oponopono or wrote in my journal. 

 

Early one morning when I came to work on the garden, I found a deer standing right in the middle of it. She had already eaten most of the flowers and stood there unafraid, looking straight at me. As she walked away I let out an audible groan of frustration. In a matter of minutes a single hungry deer had destroyed my entire garden … my forgiveness garden.

 

When the irony struck me I started laughing: of course it was the ultimate spiritual practice to try to forgive the deer that had done away with my original forgiveness ritual.

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In retrospect, I should have predicted that outcome. Just because I saw the garden as sacred ground didn’t mean the deer would pass up a meal there. And poor St. Francis was no match for the grazing doe—in fact his gentle nature probably made her feel welcome there.

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This deer may well have thought I had planted those flowers for her. It was perfect that of all the other gardens on our property, she chose the Forgiveness Garden. And of course the lesson was about forgiving what I could not control. How could I stay angry at the deer--who was just doing what deer do and had no intent to harm me?

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In forgiving the deer, I discovered I was not only forgiving one hungry animal. I was forgiving life itself — the way beauty is interrupted, the way plans are undone, the way loss arrives without asking permission. And yes, the way humans--just doing what imperfect humans do as they struggle to survive--can cause us harm that leaves scars. Somehow, in that larger act of forgiveness, the smaller knots of old resentment began to loosen too.

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Can I forgive life for being life?
Can I forgive the world for not arranging itself around my hopes?
Can I forgive what happened, even when there is no one clear person to blame?
Can I stop demanding that things should have been different?