Hello again!
New post just for the purpose of posting pictures. And I thought to spice it up a bit I'd open a book - Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love by Stephanie Dowrick - at a random page in the hope of finding something worthwhile...
So here it is (it's quite long, feel free to stop at any time, not that my permission is required for that):

"Self-forgivenss and the forgiveness of opthers seems inextricably intertwined. We move through life hurting others, as well as being hurt. We move through life hurting ourselves, as well as being hurt. Eventually some of thesee events will fade, and be entirely forgotten. With ohters, anger will soften to annoyance, irritation, sadness. Grief may blend into sorrow. Lessons will be learned. Distances maintained. Warning signs observed. The sycle of redemption continues: opennes, truthfulness, a willingness to be changed, a willingness to make amends; action that removes us from the place of suffering; action that relieves the pain of others, a willingness to learn.
"In the concentration camp of Ravensbruck, this extraordinary prayer was left by the body of a dead child: 'Oh Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but alos those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to this suffering - our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all of this, and when they come to judgement, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.'
"This radical request - that their murderers should benefit from the gifts retrieved from the suffering that they themselves had caused - is a startling example of compassion at its most profound and unitive of levels. At juts the moment when feelings of revenge, hatred and contempt would seem not just natural, but inevitable, this prayer is drawing our attention to love.
"'Would you still further weaken and break apart that which is already broken and hopeless?' asks the Course in Miracles. And, if most of us were truthful, in the face of wounding and betrayal we would have to answer yes. Wo would like to weaken it. Break it apart. Trample on it. Turn it into dust. Grind it into the ground. Scream at it. SCatter it with our tears and our blood. End it.
"The teaching goes on, still challenging us: 'Or would you not prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in making whole what has been ravaged by separartion [from God, or perhaps from one's own goodness] and disease?'
"In all the mystical traditions there are stories of those who have been tortured and killed and have suffered those fates willingly and even joyously for the chance that it has given them to take on the suffering of others. This depth on connection with life is foreign to most of us. We neither live that intensely nor could die that gloriously. But we can learn something from it.
"I am speaking ot a young Chinese poet who is visiting Australia for a year on a writer's fellowship. We have met at the writers' retreat where I am working on this book. He wused ot be a Zen Buddhist but a few years ago became a Christian. It's not easy to be a Christian in China. It pusts you at risk politically and socially. Nevertheless, his faith inChrist fills him with joy. The joy spread right across his face when he speaks of it.
"Later in the evening we are talking about his son. The poet tell me what a fine teacher to him his son is. The boy is almost seven. With his mother, the poet's wife, the child arrived in Australia just a few weeks earlier. He was invited to take part in a children's chior. Unfortunately he weas highly praised by the chiormaster, and the chiormaster's son, who was also in the chior, resented and literally pushed the poet's son out. The poet was angrey. Telling me, I can see his offence. The boy, however, was not angry. Instead, he said to the poet: 'I prayed to the Lord to love this boy moreAnd I prayed that the Lord would keep on allowing me to forgive. Why should I be angry?'
"The poet reflects on his son's beauty and wisdom and says to me: 'This boy is filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the Lord's work. He is a very unusual boy.'
...
"Forgiveness is the means to release yourself and perhaps others, too, form an experience of hurt, injury, wounding, suffering, humiliation or pain that has already passed. It is what allows you at least some separation from that experience so that you can be fresh to what is present in this moment.
"It is the means to let go not only what was done to you, but how you were then, so that you can experience yourself as you are now. When it is appropriate, it is also the means to move on from an old version of another person to who that person is now.
...
"To forgive may be an act of supreme love and gentleness, but it is also tough. It demands that at least one party faces the truth - and learns something of value form it. It does not involve condoning, trivialising, minimising, excusing, ignoring or pretending to forget what has been done. It does not withdraw blame. Yet it may also ask you to be careful how you apportion blame; whether you absent yourself from events or remain present.
" 'Hate is not conquered by hate, the Dhammapada teaches. 'Hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.' "
"Even under the most dire circumstances, long before any version of forgiveness itslef becomes possible, impersonal love - the love that makes no distinction between you and other living creatures - demands that you give up notions of vengence. This may not mean ceasing to be angry, if angry is what you feel. Forgiveness certainly does not mean pretending that things are fine when they are not. Nor does iy mean refusing to take whatever action is needed to redress past wrongs, or to protect you in the future.
"We often tlak about forgiveness in a context that suggest we are giving things away when we forgive. Or that we are accepting something inreturn when others forgive us. This is illusory. Offering our firgiveness, or allowing forgiveness to arise in whatever nascent forms within us, takes nothing away from us. It restores to us something that is always within us but from which we have become unbound: a sense on unity expressed through the wualities of trust, faith, hope and love.
"That subtle, profound relationship between unity and love is captured perfectly for me by Gabrielle Lord when she writes: [This] is where real love starts to grow, in the dawning truth that you are the same as me. Not the same person, as an obsessive and destructive Heathcliff-Cathy coupling [from Wuthering Heights], but the same in your unchanging spirit - having the same need for respect, the same longing for peace, the same yearning for acceptance and love, and having the same fears of suffering and loss. Once a person has come to comprhend these huge and over-riding points of similarity, it becomes impossible to see the differences - of appearance, income, social status - as having much substance at all anymore. People start to be seen mor elike the flowers, shrubs and trees of a garden; all entirely different in appearance, yet all needing the same care to keep them alive: sunlight, water and sustenance.' [Or as the Dalai Lama would put it 'We all want happiness and do not want suffering].
"Forgiveness neither begins nor ends with words. Words can, in fact, stand in for forgiveness as poor substitutes for something that actually requires intense reflection, contemplation, resolution and action. Far more important than words are the shifts in attitude those words accompany, the changed actions they allow, the compassion they elicit, and, ideally, the love they free to flow.
" 'Forgiveness,' teaches the Course in Miracles, 'paints a picture of a world where suffering is over, loss becomes impossible and anger makes no sense. Attack is gone and madness has an end.'
"For anyone enduring the anguish that arouses the desire to retaliate, punish, take revenge, or kill, this picture may seem impossibly rosy. It depends on and also draws together all the vitues that we have been considering: courage, fidelity, restraint, generosity, tolerance. Forgiveness calls on wisdom and calls out to love, and forges them into something strong enough not to wipe out what has been, but ot transorm the way that one views what has been, and currently experiences it :

" 'Friend, it's time to make an effort,
So you become a grown human being,
And go out picking jewels
Of feeling for others.' "

...

"To claim the wholeness of our lives, and to release the compassion that only such wholeness can allow, we need to free ourselves form our prison of indifference, from the chains ooof cynicism. from the manacles of false innocence. We need to step into the open air, feeling the earth that's beneath our feet and being thankful for that, and looking up at the sky.
"There is such fierce and free besuty in any rare moment that we stand upright between earth and sky, conscious of the blessing of existence. 'We and nature are one,' sings the poet Andrew Harvey. 'One dance, one feast, one radiance...'
"It is easy to complain that the dance is not to our liking ["this dance is difficult/this dance is hard/this makes me wanna spin/round in my yard" - Mirah] that the feast has turned sour, that the radiance has dimmed.
"WE can rage against that, and beat against our fate with out tiney hands. WE cna shout that life is unfair; that we deserve better; that suffering's long stick shoud tap some other shoulder.
"Or we can look around us.
"Looking aorund us, we can see how others also suffer - and may need our help. We cna see that the seasons of suffering are often quite incredibly followed by seasons of insight, increased wisdom and even joy. We cna see that sometimes the suffering is of our own making - and it is we who must most urgently and humbly make amends. We cans ee that help comes when we ask for it - but sometimes wearing strange disguises.

" 'A new heart I will give you,
And a new spirit I will put within you:
And I will take out of your flesh,
the heart of stone;
And give you a heart of flesh.'

"Roberto Assagioli tells this old story of three stonecutters, all employed on the building of a cathedral in medieval time. When the first was asked what he was doing he said, angrily, 'As you see, I am cutting stones.' The sencond replied, pragmatically, 'I am earning a living for my family.' The third said, joyfully, 'Iam building a great cathedral.'
"Forgiveness lives or dies not in what has been done to us, and how we feel about that, but on the deepest and most telling attitudes that we bring to our own stone-cutting, to the meaning we find in existence. At the heart of exitence lies a bewitching paradox that echoes in all the virtues: that the more openly and truthfully we expereince our connection with others, the less personal and conditional this connection needs to be. In bowing deeply to the heart of the person you have injured, or feel injured by, you acknowledge what you share; yet this knowledge can set you free. For only when we understand what we share willo we also understand how compassion emerges from truth and love and wholeness - and changes everything."

There! And to finish off, a poem by Jellaludin Rumi:

Begin

This is now. Now is. Don't
postpone till then. Spend

the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table,

dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy

and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the

spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth

for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You're

the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.

Take care, all, and have a fab time :)