The Urn of Forgiveness

In the late Old English sense, to forgive is “to give up the desire or power to punish.” Today, I feel as though I have given up the desire to be angry at my mother. These old wounds have yet to heal, but I know I won’t feel truly fulfilled and whole until I am able to fully forgive. There seems to be fine balance between healing and forgiveness. When I heal, I’ll be able to forgive, and forgiveness is the balm that brings healing.

A few years ago, I did some deep work around forgiveness and reached a point of understanding there was nothing to forgive when it came to my mother for she came from of place of woundedness. In these past few months I realized I had only reached an intellectual understanding of this. My heart had not given up the anger.  

But today, I’m tired of the fight. I engage shadows of the past to no avail except to keep the anger alive. To what end? Perhaps I just need to feel all those old feelings that I suppressed. And I have felt many of them in these past few months. Today, I stop resisting and simply let all I feel rise as it will.

I know part of what has held me back, kept me from fulfilling my potential is the anger and hurt. To forgive will allow me to move on into the life I’ve always wanted. It begins in the heart as I always say. I forgot this for a while. We can’t forgive in our minds because it is the heart that is hurting. The heart lives outside of time and space and so there is no putting a limit on how long it will take to heal. It’s a matter of letting it be as it is. We can offer it reason. Sometimes that perspective can help. But mostly we simply need to let it be. One day you’ll find yourself watching the clouds drift across the sky and feel as though the sun has finally emerged within.

Why Cauldron of Healing?

A cauldron is a container in which things are transformed by the heat of fire. The fire represents those experiences that help us grow. Our life is the cauldron, the container our soul uses to heal, transform and free us. Here is what I mean by freedom.

Freedom is to enter life more fully,

not to escape it.

Freedom is to enter the body more fully,

not to transcend it.

Freedom is to enter the moment more fully,

not to move beyond it.

Freedom is…

yours.

Cauldron of Healing

The fire brings changes.

Life brings changes.

The wood burns and I with it.

There is no other light but that

which burns within.

The cauldron bears the heat.

All within breaks down just enough

for something new to be born.

I am stirred.

My emotions, my sense of balance

stirred until something else begins.

The heat. The fire. Soon…

the moment of my rebirth.

Joanne Young Elliott ©2016