Forgiving Is Tough. Excusing Is Easy. What

We Feel Properly Embarrassed When We Are Caught Doing Something That Makes Us Look Inept, Knuckleheaded, Or Inappropriate. Maybe The Difference Is This: We Feel Embarrassed Because We Look Bad, And We Feel Shame Because We Think We Are Bad. When We Are Embarrassed, We Feel Socially Foolish. When We Are Shamed, We Feel Morally Unworthy.

Once We Have Forgiven, However, We Get A New Freedom To Forget. This Time Forgetting Is A Sign Of Health; It Is Not A Trick To Avoid Spiritual Surgery. We Can Forget Because We Have Been Healed. But Even If It Is Easier To Forget After We Forgive, We Should Not Make Forgetting A Test Of Our Forgiving. The Test Of Forgiving Lies With Healing The Lingering Pain Of The Past, Not With Forgetting The Past Has Ever Happened.

The Secret Of Grace Is That It Can Be All Right At The Center Even When It Is All Wrong On The Edges.

The Difference Between Guilt And Shame Is Very Clear--in Theory. We Feel Guilty For What We Do. We Feel Shame For What We Are. A Person Feels Guilt Because He Did Something Wrong. A Person Feels Shame Because He Is Something Wrong. We May Feel Guilty Because We Lied To Our Mother. We May Feel Shame Because We Are Not The Person Our Mother Wanted Us To Be.

Gandhi Was Right: If We All Live By 'an Eye For An Eye' The Whole World Will Be Blind. The Only Way Out Is Forgiveness.