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editorial suggestions consistently improved the manuscript.
I am very thankful for our literary agent, David Nelson, for all his tireless efforts on behalf of this book.
I owe special thanks to all the friends and acquaintances who generously offered their most intimate memories of their own struggles with forgiveness. My daughter Christina Schmidt and stepdaughter Betsey Schmidt never ceased to encourage me when my spirits flagged. And, of course, my companion Kent Carroll, who graciously and for the most part uncomplainingly allowed me to disrupt our lives by devoting inordinate hours—and even years—to the film and the book it is based upon. To him, my deepest gratitude.
FOREWORD
Why is it so important that we forgive and why do so many of us find it so difficult to forgive?
Forgiveness is difficult and complex. It can involve issues of justice and reparations and of course deep seated anger and the wish for revenge. Forgiveness is not a question of forgetting the wrong done; if you’ve forgotten what was done, there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness involves refusing to allow yourself to give in to anger and the desire for revenge. This is why forgiveness ultimately brings peace.
This book and the PBS documentary it accompanies present a powerful exploration of this most important subject.
All of us carry memories of things that we have done that we are not happy about. There isn’t anyone who hasn’t wounded someone else’s feelings, or physically hurt someone, or in some extreme cases even killed someone. The problem is we tend to think we live in isolation; you in your separate world and I in mine. These notions of separateness and isolation are what give rise to fear, suspicion, and mistrust.
Human beings need to live together and are dependent on each other in many essential ways. We are deeply connected, in fact, interdependent. Science tells us very clearly that nothing exists in isolation, powered by itself. But because we can’t see it, we mistakenly cling to our separate identities. All that concerns us is me, my family, my village, my people, my religion, my nation. And the next thing we know, we’re in conflict. Out of a narrow vision of the world, we’ve all committed acts that we are not proud of. We’ve all hurt each other deeply, even within the circle of our own families and friends. And often we’re not even concerned about how we’ve hurt those outside our protected circle.
The basic feature of society is kindness, for it is only through kindness and compassion, caring for others, that society can succeed. If it is correct that qualities such as love, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness are what happiness consists in, and if it is also correct that compassion is both the source and the fruit of these qualities, then the more we are compassionate, patient, and forgiving, the more we provide for our own happiness. Thus, any idea that concern for others, though a noble quality, is a matter only for our private lives, is simply short-sighted. Compassion and with it, forgiveness, belongs to every sphere of activity.
Someone once asked me if there was anything I thought was unforgivable? And I think the answer is that the only thing I might find unforgivable would be if I myself were unable to forgive. In fact, in Mahayana Buddhism, not to forgive, especially when someone has offered you an apology, is considered a serious transgression of the bodhisattva’s altruistic pledge.
Forgiveness may be difficult, and it sometimes takes time to achieve, but in the end, it will always bring a measure of peace to ourselves as individuals and to our relations with others.
January 24, 2011
PREFACE
I remember vividly the first time I considered forgiveness as a subject for my next project. It was not a moment of blinding clarity, an on-the-road-to-Damascus event that would provide material for a dramatic preface. Instead, I experienced a range of conflicting emotions: confusion, fascination, of course, but fear as well. In truth, flight was the dominant impulse.
It happened five years ago on a luminously clear day in Salt Lake City where I was surveying Temple Square trying to find the perfect closing shot for my PBS series, “The Mormons.” I needed an image that could be the last word about this rapidly growing religion born on American soil. I was exhausted. The four long years involved in completing the series were worthy of the epic struggles of the Mormons crossing the plains. There had been the usual logistical and financial problems of any production, but in addition I’d had serious conflicts over questions about the meaning of Mormonism and its place in American religious history.
The spiritual landscape is my beat; I had put down my flag on this territory thirty years ago when I produced my first and still favorite film for ABC about life in a Trappist monastery. It had been a life-changing experience. Others followed. But after a series of documentaries focusing on religion, I came to realize that while this territory is fascinating, provoking the deepest questions, it is not always a land of milk and honey. These subjects could also be contentious, fractious, filled with landmines and exhausting.
So, at the moment when my cell phone rang, I was dreaming of rest in a small Umbrian town to be followed by a small project, richly layered of course, but narrowly focused. Perhaps a biography of an artist—ideally someone who lived in my hometown, New York City. I was bone tired of life on the road so if I could shoot and write everything in my living room, that would have been perfect. I was looking forward to recovering my life.
The phone kept ringing, insistently, while I was staring at the odd surreal beauty of the Mormon Temple trying to find my shot. When I finally answered, a stranger, Paul Dietrich, introduced himself as a global investment manager, a spiritual seeker, and an admirer of my work. Without any small talk, he immediately made a passionate pitch why forgiveness should be my next subject. Barely pausing, Dietrich offered me a fully funded two-hour film and a companion book to be based on it. He concluded with his assurance of complete artistic freedom. A bolt out of the blue. Not the usual way projects are launched.
Given my intense engagement with spiritual themes, the subject was a perfect fit but it was also perfectly wrong. It was everything I had vowed not to do at this point in my life. Forgiveness was larger than the mood I was in after so many epic battles about the Mormons. It was larger than my film about 9/11, “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” It was even larger than my most ambitious film about Pope John Paul II, a man whose life intersected with every major event in the twentieth century. Forgiveness was vast, shapeless, emotionally and psychologically scarier than any of my earlier films. The intellectual and geographical boundaries seemed infinite. Where do I begin? How do I structure it? I saw myself back on a road that might take me far from New York City, across the world, around the globe.
Moreover, while forgiveness evokes mystery and power, it also comes with an aura of sentimentality, of hushed reverence and of unexamined New Age pieties. The most egregious: it is always better to forgive than not and someone who remains angry is the lesser for it, a spiritual underachiever.
Before I take on a project, I have an unvarying ritual. I talk to friends, colleagues, and strangers. I roam through libraries and the Internet. I have long lunches with experts. I dream day and night about the topic’s possibilities and its pitfalls. This process allows me to ease into the water gradually—or to get back on shore before it is too late. Such caution is appropriate given that these projects can take years. But with forgiveness, surprisingly, the exploratory process was unusually brief; after only a few weeks I jumped in.
Sometimes I look back on this period, mystified. What was it that I discovered that overrode my reservations so quickly and decisively?
To say that I discovered that forgiveness mattered deeply, urgently and sometimes dangerously to many of the people with whom I spoke sounds banal and obvious, but it wasn’t so to me. Of course, I was no stranger to the strong emotions that surround forgiveness and unforgiveness. I had my critics and I had judged them in turn. I had experienced betrayal as well, and I too had caused emotional injury to those I