more on the last story offorgiveness ...

Alistair further says: " But I don’t think I have a right to ask for forgiveness. .... asking for forgiveness is more about the needs of the perpetrator than the needs of the victim, or of the family who have lost a loved one."

Certainly when I think about my own wanting forgiveness from someone, when it has been from a position of recognising [as with Alistair] the utter wrongness of something I've done and the fact that I cannot un-do it and that there's nothing that can actually make it right again, there is a done-ness to it; an un-call-backableness of it that means that there really is no "right" to ask for forgiveness. It seems to me that the point of real forgiveness is precisely this: it gratuitous nature; it cannot be forced or bought or levered; it is a gracious reponse. If we will only ask for forgivenss if we feel we have a right to it then we won't ask: we'll never have the right; we only ever have a desire and can only ever throw ourselves on the mercy and perhaps, to some extent, the understanding and common humanity of the person we are asking forgiveness from. There is a strong thread of it being about the needs of the perpetrator rather than the victims. The victims have no 'need' to forgive, there is no claim on them save perhaps that of not storing up bitterness for themselves.

Inb fact Alistair in the midst of the piece I have just quoted says that asking forgiveness " places yet another burden upon relatives and family members." It could have the potential to do this. I'm not sure that it would fell to be that unless the family and frineds felt there was some kind of moral obligation to forgive, but if they did then it is probably the case that the asking would be no greater a burden than they already felt ... maybe .... I can see in these words -perhaps- a projection of feeling the lack of anything to 'enforce' a claim on forgiveness onto those who might do the forgiving; a senseo fo the gratuity of what is being asked. And that sense is important because it comes from a real sense that forgiveness is going to cost the forgiver something, and that I find interesting; that forgiveness costs the forgiving party or else it is not forgiveness. [discuss?].