Forgiveness
I missed Tuesday. My bad. I was out quite late with a friend in from out of town. As Tuesday was my father’s birthday, I had intended to do a collage in his honor. I will be making that up this weekend, as it’s still important to me that I do that.
Forgiveness actually refers to the title of the workshop that we had tonight in my mentoring program. I really wish I had taken some photos of the process, because it was creative AND very powerful. The idea behind the workshop is that not forgiving someone is only detrimental to yourself — and holding you back from moving on. So, this was a chance for people to forgive someone they felt has wronged them.
We had large rolls of paper, scissors, markers, glue, and tons of magazines. We were to trace an outline of someone who is of a similar size of the person you are forgiving. Then, draw a vertical line down the outline, splitting the body in half. The next part was to find images, words, and ideas that represented what we didn’t like in that person or how we had felt wronged. We wrote in or glued in those ideas on the right half of the body — like a collage. Next, we found images, words, thoughts, that convey what we want(ed) from that person — positive thoughts and ideas. These were put on the left half of the body.
Once that was complete, we sat in a circle (there were about 40 of us) and we had the chance to walk the community through our creation — first the negative, then the positive. Once we were ready to forgive, we ripped the paper in half, down the line splitting the left from the right. Then we were asked to look at the community and see where you are finding these positive attributes (as we usually find them in someone else) and give them the left half of the body.
Very cool and very powerful. As I said, I wish I had taken pix.
-Jen
Last 5 posts by SeaJen
- Observations - February 23rd, 2008
- My house - February 23rd, 2008
- The Bus - February 20th, 2008
- Tuesday - February 20th, 2008
- Aspiration - February 18th, 2008