Chain of fools

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

            Voltaire, Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gerry O'Rourke's Forgiveness Process

All of us need to have access to forgiveness, at least from time to time in our lives. No one of us escapes the need for forgiveness at some time in our lives.

• Forgiveness is abundant. It is not scarce.
• Forgiveness is not about forgetting. The more you or I remember as we forgive, the more powerful will be our forgiveness and our memories can be healed. 
• Forgiveness is not a condoning of the evil that is perpetrated on us. This is a vital point.
• Forgiveness can restore the broken and violated trust in our lives. 
• Forgiveness does not come from our feelings and emotions that have been damaged. Forgiveness will heal and re-empower them. 
• Forgiveness always includes the need for restitution and compensation when called for. 
• Forgiveness will truly heal the urge or need for resentment that you may crave against your perpetrator.
  

THE PROCESS

Forgiveness has two elements:
    a) to receive forgiveness, accept forgiveness
    b) to offer, give forgiveness, as in “I forgive you.”

In this process, I deal only with b) giving forgiveness.  Forgiveness comes from the core and center of who you are, who we are. That is from our will, our willingness. This is a vital and essential point as we begin the process.

Question 1) Are you (Am I) willing to forgive whoever is the person or the group of persons or the institution that has hurt you, damaged you, or violated you?

Your answer can only be “Yes” or “No”. Either answer is authentic. If your answer is “Yes”, then and only then, you move to the next question.

Question 2) Are you (Am I) willing to forgive the person/ persons/institution totally? That is for all and every item that offended you. It could be a few times or thousands of times over years, even decades.

If your answer is “Yes” then and only then, you move to the next question.

Question 3) Are you (Am I) willing to forgive the person/ persons/ institution absolutely? This question has to do with untying, loosening, unfettering the rigid, unrelenting way you regard and hold the perpetrator(s).

Your “Yes” will allow you to let go of your stuckness and rigidity. Your “Yes” allows you to go to the next question.

Question 4) Are you (Am I) willing to forgive the person/persons/institution unconditionally? That is, you deprive yourself and give up all your excuses; your “ifs,” your “ands,” and your “buts”; all and every condition that you have or could conjure up. You leave yourself no escape!

Your “Yes” then is clean and authentic as you forgive unconditionally. Then your forgiveness is complete! You have forgiven the person/persons/institution totally, absolutely and unconditionally. You will experience a great healing yourself and a wonderful opening for a miracle in your relationship with others, maybe with your former enemy(s) and, of course, a re-empowerment in your life to make a difference in the way you live your life.

Congratulations and thank you for your great courage and generosity.

Once you have completed a Forgiveness Process as described above, it will be relatively easy to use the same process over and over in your life as needed. Indeed if you are willing, you may become a master of this process. Do not be afraid to hand on this gift of forgiveness to others! “Freely have you received, freely give away.”

Never be afraid to acknowledge the gifts you receive when you generously forgive. Among those gifts, almost always, your feelings, your emotions, and your memories will be healed, or at the least you will be open to being healed in this vital area of your life. And if you have a religious or spiritual commitment in your life, it will be greatly empowered and enhanced if you are a person of forgiveness.

And, if your answer is “No” to one or all of the four questions in the process, and you continue to answer “No,” that is certainly your privilege.  I suggest, however, that it is truly important to ask a further question and do your best to deal with it. The question is “What is it costing you in your life to say “No” to those four questions?”  You are the only one who can answer this question and who will live with the consequences of your answer. Do not be afraid to look at what your resentment may really be costing you.

Fr. P. Gerrard O'Rourke

Remembering Fr. Gerry O'Rourke, May 27, 1925 - July 29, 2020

[Written for a forthcoming book by Michael Delia on Fr. Gerry O'Rourke's forgiveness process.]

This book on forgiveness, lovingly assembled and written by Michael Delia, is based on the work of Fr. Gerry O’Rourke, a Roman Catholic priest. Of course, all Catholic priests are schooled in the sacrament of forgiveness. Knowing something, however, even believing it, is not the same as being able to get your hands on it when you need it most. We know we should forgive, we may want to forgive, but often we struggle to find a way. So Gerry created four questions as a guide, a simple, if not necessarily easy, process that has worked miracles for those who have followed it.

Born in the town of Roscommon, Ireland, in 1925, and christened Patrick Gerard O’Rourke, we all knew him as Gerry. He was named Patrick for an uncle who had been studying for the priesthood when he died of influenza in the pandemic of 1918. Gerry himself would die during the Covid pandemic in 2020, although not from the virus but heart failure.

The oldest of eight children, Gerry was ordained to the priesthood in 1950. Another brother also became a priest, and a sister became a nun. With the exception of five years in a rural Irish parish, Gerry spent his priesthood working outside Ireland – in Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Brazil, and finally in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1973, Gerry stepped aside from the active priesthood, feeling burned out. But after participating in The est Training that same year and subsequently volunteering and working in the est organization, he took up his priesthood again in 1979 with new energy and commitment. For the rest of his life, Gerry would be both a priest and an active supporter of the transformational work of Werner Erhard.

Gerry often said, "We live in a kairos moment," referring to the Greek term favored by theologian Paul Tillich for times of crisis and opportunity which demand our attention and action. And Gerry used that kairos moment to act. For more than 10 years, he served as the Director of Ecumenical and Interfaith Affairs for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. He also was instrumental in the creation and establishment of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, the Interfaith Center of the Presidio in San Francisco, and the United Religions Initiative.

In the early 1980s, Gerry was one of the founders of the Mastery Foundation with the purpose of empowering leaders of faith communities working in ministry and service to others and grassroots leaders working to reconcile and heal communities where religious identity is part of a conflict or division. In 1984, Werner Erhard designed and led our original program Making a Difference: A Course for Those Who Minister and has generously worked with and supported us in the years since. It was our commitment to reconciliation in places divided by religious differences and Gerry’s love for Ireland that first took us there in 1986 and then to Northern Ireland in 1994. Gerry faithfully served on the Board of Trustees from the beginning and as our Chair from 2005 until his death.

I am a man of forgiveness and love. That was Gerry’s declaration, the commitment from which he lived. All he wanted from life was to be useful, to make a positive difference in the lives of those around him. He was not a holy man in the sense of being pious or sanctimonious. Life was not necessarily easy for him, but he bore his burdens lightly and mostly quietly. He loved a good time, which usually meant long conversations with friends over good food and wine. You never went wrong following one of Gerry’s restaurant recommendations. And often, if you mentioned Gerry to the restaurant staff, you were showered with bigger smiles and special treatment.

There were no strangers around Gerry. Late in 2018, at the age of 93, he could no longer live on his own and moved to assisted living near his parish church. When I visited him a week or two later, he knew all the staff and residents – not just their names, but the details of their lives. He knew how they came to be there, where they were from; he knew about their families, their interests, and their religion, if they had one.

It probably helped that he had the appearance and personality of someone sent over from the Central Casting Department to play the role of an Irish priest. Gerry was unfailingly and authentically welcoming in that way the Irish have. “You’re very welcome to Ireland,” they say when you visit, as if they are not just greeting you but delighted to offer you the entire place as a gift. In his presence, you felt welcome, and you felt his love for you. Nothing gooey or sentimental for this Irishman. His love was fierce as well as gentle, kind and reassuring. He gave you his full attention and listened so carefully that you felt yourself lighter, more at peace, when you walked away. Many who met him only once or in passing remembered him long afterward.

But you would be wrong if you thought him a pushover. There was a toughness to him, a kind of unrelenting will and single-mindedness, especially when it came to forgiveness. He knew that forgiveness ultimately was an act of will, not a sentiment or emotion. We forgive when we are willing, and not before. So, he honored your negative answers to his questions, but he never stopped asking you to look again.

In the end, all you really need to know about Gerry O’Rourke, as he would have told you himself, is that he was a man of forgiveness and love. He lived from a context of forgiveness that allowed him to see the places where forgiveness was missing. He saw past right and wrong, good and bad, which allowed him to contribute, to open doors that had been slammed shut by blame, shame, and hurt. It allowed him to see possibilities where none had existed and to make those possibilities accessible to others.

Years ago, the secretary of the church where Gerry was working told me about a funeral where Gerry had presided. The family of the deceased was deeply divided, full of anger and resentment for each other. “Let me guess,” I said. “Gerry preached about forgiveness.” “Yes,” she said, “but he spoke about forgiveness as if it were a new thing!”

Forgiveness was always new with Gerry, always available, always miraculous. He lived to make the possibility and the reality of forgiveness available to everyone. The four simple, yet difficult, questions in this book are his legacy and his gift to us all.

Creating change

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

            Buckminster Fuller, Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

No hope

Hope is the raw material of losers.

        Fernando Flores, Fast Company magazine

Sustainability

We don't have to save the world.
    The world is big enough to look after itself.
        What we have to be concerned about
            is whether or not the world we live in
                will be capable of sustaining us in it.

                            Douglas Adams, 2001 speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originality

The more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.

                Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation