If you spend any time in South African and possibly any African nation, you will encounter the difficult questions of forgiveness. How is it possible to forgive such enormous injustice? How do I forgive the big hurts that I have experienced? How do I receive forgiveness? When you read the Tutu's books on forgiveness and hear their stories it becomes even more miraculous. Their lives are witness to its healing power. This man of small stature and a big laugh is proof of its power. Van Reeuwwyk recalls an exercise the Tutus suggest from The Book of Forgiving.
"Carrying the Stone" asks you to take a palm-sized stone in your dominant hand, to represent the wrong done to you, and carry it for six hours without setting it down. Difficult to do I imagine. They also suggest the four step process of telling the story, naming the hurts, granting forgiveness and renewing or releasing the relationship. But I also like Jo-Ann's ongoing practice of carrying a stone in ones pocket as a daily reminder of the things I have been forgiven and the need to forgive others. A small physical practice to call us back to the heart of the gospel life, a practice to slowly move the stones from our hearts and to remind us of immovable stones that give way to resurrected life.