“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” –Lewis B. Smede
Forgiveness. Of the thousands of words in the English language, few carry as much emotional charge and power as the word “forgive”. For me personally, I am often reminded of the famous Robert Frost poem “The Road Less Traveled”:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Forgiveness is a tricky concept. It requires a complete breakdown of ego, a dissolution of pride. It is not something that can be done easily or halfway. When somebody wrongs you, hurts or shames you… the first and often enduring reaction is anger, vengeance, or on the flip-side, total avoidance. Fences are built. Walls erected. The drawbridge raised — the battle lines heavily drawn and reinforced. We revert to our basic animalistic nature — to protect ourselves, to survive, to lash out in reciprocation of the injustice inflicted upon us. And why not? It’s a natural impulse.
And yet, more often than not, this initial reaction has the tendency to take over. To mutate beyond that first inflicted wound into something more cancerous. A scar that refuses to heal. I know I am talking here in large, sweeping generalizations… but we have all felt this in some way — When somebody wrongs you, it is extremely difficult, sometimes damn near impossible to find it in your heart to forgive them. And this to me is when you approach that fork in the road — you can stay on the path of perpetual hurt (which in many ways is the easier path), or you can take a sharp turn onto the less traveled road. The road of forgiveness. For the sake of argument, let’s call it the higher road.
And this is where the story of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino comes in…
In 1984, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was a beautiful, young student at Elton college. An African-American man broke into her room, and at knife-point, forcibly raped her. She was devastated, emotionally, physically destroyed in that instant. Working with the police, she managed to create a sketch of the assailant, and then picked him out of a lineup. She testified that 22 yr old Ronald Cotton was undeniably the man who raped her. Ronald, who claimed innocence, was thrown in prison with a 50 yr sentence. For Jennifer, it was the happiest day of her life.
Eleven years later, with the aid of new advances in DNA evidence, Ronald Cotton was proven innocent and cleared of the crime. He was released at 33, a free man. And the surprising part… he held absolutely no hostility towards the desperate white woman who had mistakenly slandered his name and robbed him of a decade of his life. In fact, he felt empathetic. He understood her hurt, the depth of her anger. It was the same anger he himself still held toward the real rapist, the man who had gotten away and allowed Ronald to take the rap.
At the same time, Jennifer was devastated by the news she had put an innocent man in prison. The guilt and shame was so palpable, it threatened to crush her in a way the anger never could. And the only thing that saved her was meeting Ronald, and him telling her in all sincerity “that he forgave her a long time ago.” At that moment, Jennifer was able to allow herself to let go. To forgive herself.
In her own words: “At that moment I began to heal. Ronald taught me how to let go of all that pain; his forgiveness set me free that night. Without Ronald, I would still be shackled to that moment in time, and it would own me forever. I soon discovered that I could even forgive the man who had raped me—not because he asked me to, nor because he deserved it—but because I did not want to be a prisoner of my own hatred.
And now, most incredibly, the two are friends. They have written a book together: Picking Cotton. They go on speaking tours. Can you imagine that? Two lives completely decimated by one tremendous wrong, bonded together and ultimately redeemed by the healing power of forgiveness. Could you forgive somebody who had raped you, or wrongly accused you? And not just forgive, but move further… grow intimate and close?
I stand in amazement and awe at these two people, at their strength and resiliency. At the power of their positive and unbreakable spirits. And I challenge you all, I challenge myself, to follow their example. To take ownership for our own words and actions. To forgive when we have been wronged, and to acknowledge when we have done wrong to others (perhaps an even more difficult feat). There can be no growth, no resolution, without first forgiveness.I leave you with the words of the great English poet Alexander Pope: “To err is human; to forgive is divine.”
Happy 4th!
-Aaron
If you have time, 60 minutes did an interesting in-depth piece on their story which can be watched here…
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