My favorite movie of all time is An Officer and a Gentleman. I love the characters, I love the plot, I love how painful and beautiful it is. Though what I love most is the redemption of each person. In the final scene they are all repaired, restored and atoned. Each person was so terribly broken from their life circumstances, and their own actions, yet in the end they were redeemed.
How often do we allow those in our lives redemption? When do we give ourselves the grace of being redeemed? Where do we meet in the middle with our humanity and brokenness?
In my Evangelical Christian days, I loved the stories of someone who should have been beyond redemption, but their God saved them and turned a horror story into something amazing. Jesus telling the criminal on the cross next to him in his last moments of life "Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.". I recall hearing about a mother who went to death row to forgive her son's killer and how we should all ascribe to that level of forgiveness. Redemption for someone nobody wanted redeemed.
Yet it's such a fine line for each of us as to where our boundaries start and stop, where we forgive, and another might not. We speak from our own experience and feel whatever the outcome of our similar situation might be will also be that for you. We judge, condemn and assume, while believing our experience is the sole source of truth.
I definitely do this in our current political climate. I'm enraged with no room for an experience other than my own or that of what I've witnessed. I feel the same about religion and refuse to make space to hear anything otherwise. Not a good look but it's the truth of this moment for me.
On the flip side I hate being told what I should or shouldn't forgive. I read years ago "You don't have to forgive" and it was one of the most powerful statements of my life. One of my favorite author's, Anne Lamott, says, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." So where do we draw the line? And do we allow others the autonomy to draw their boundaries outside of our own?
I don't believe in absolutes. I believe change is always possible. In yoga we say, "everything can change with your next breath". I've seen the worst humans turn their entire being around into amazing people, and I've seen heroes and saints plummet. We make the best choices for ourselves, sometimes redeeming the unredeemable, with the hope we might one day be extended the same grace.
"We're all just walking each other home." ~ Ram Dass
