Sorrow without Forgiveness

I grew up in a typical Australian family in the 60s and at that time we still considered that we were a country built on traditional values and friends mattered. When I was a kid I was told that when your friends said sorry it was up to you to forgive them. I was also told that it was bad-mannered not to forgive someone who asked for forgiveness. You would never consider not forgiving a friend because mateship is part of our consciousness as a nation. It was through this process of apology and forgiveness that allowed you to make up with your friends and carry on the relationship no matter what they had done.

To day our world is different our values and our composition as a nation has changed but dose the basic formula of apology and forgiveness still work? Is mateship still the overriding definition of who we are as Australians? There was a time when you would forgive your mate for anything, but do we still have it in us today?

I believe sorrow and forgiveness are built into our very fiber as humans; we don’t like it when people are not happy with us. Most of us would normally seek forgiveness when we do the wrong thing and we would normally give forgiveness in return for an apology given, but for some sorrow is not always acknowledged and forgiveness is replaced by dissatisfaction and feelings of victomisation and resentment. It is at this point that relationships break down irreconcilably and nothing can save it, there is never reconciliation.

Reconciliation can be viewed as a process, a process made up of two parts; sorrow or apology and forgiveness or acceptance of the apology. What responsibility is there between the parties who take part in this process? This process can lead to restoration of the relationship or the breakdown and destruction of the relationship depending on the path chosen in the process. So where will the Australian government apology to Aboriginal Australians lead us? Following the apology some years ago there has been much discussion of compensation and restitution but there has been no discussion of forgiveness the important second ingredient in reconciliation. Can there be reconciliation without the acceptance of the apology and without a genuine forgiveness?

The long term impact of the Federal Parliament’s apology will be a measure of the spirit of the parties involved. For so long we have been told that the reconciliation process could not continue without an apology and that without an expression of sorrow we would not heal as a nation. If this is true then there is obviously an important role for sorrow in the process of reconciliation. If that statement is true then forgiveness must also play an equally important role. This places a burden on Aboriginal leadership, for with an expression of sorrow should there not be acceptance and an expression of forgiveness? Sorrow without forgiveness will never lead to reconciliation but could plunge us into irreconcilable breakdown.

If reconciliation between us was the true motivation for the Government’s apology and it is the true desire for Aboriginal Australia for reconciliation then there can only be one response because sorrow without forgiveness is only half the process. If this country still holds to the values of the past and mateship is alive and well there is reason for hope. Reconciliation is the responsibility of each party and it takes the elements of sorrow and forgiveness to bind the friends together again