The Immensity of Forgiveness

The Immensity of Forgiveness

Source: popularresistance.org

The day is coming when racial prejudice will be a thing of the past.

That is the direction humanity is moving and toward which every incarcerated person of color points, whether we see or understand it or not at the moment.

In the meantime there are people of every color in America who are prepared, trained and willing to lead us out of the Armageddon of racially based penal confinement.

Imagine that there are people around us who love so deeply that they are motivated to act from their own center of love for the justice of others.

They are evolution in motion!

They have learned the art of self-sacrifice and look through eyes of hope at the imprisoned. They act upon the encouragement of the still small voice within and compassionately serve those who desire freedom, but not only freedom—responsible contribution to the whole.

They labor for life itself as it can be lived in law, politics, education, economics, the arts and the social front.

The simple acts of listening, caring about another and talking about the “outside” in hushed tones.

Hoping, hoping, alas hoping that their expressions are sufficiently love and wisdom-filled to have lasting beauty.

Within the arc of love they mark themselves by their inclusiveness.

Those who would aid their imprisoned brothers participate in making plans for these bounded lives who have served their time or a judge reprieves them and lets them go.

Such servants of humanity are the barrier breakers of the world, those who work in anguish for the plight of others and know beyond any shadow of doubt that those who are or have been unjustly imprisoned cannot, indeed, will not fall.

Source: fentresshopefoundation.com

They are the forerunners of a divine multitude. We look to them for guidance, support and every measure of help as they cross into the dawn of a different age.

They come from every career background, every continent and island. Some are well educated.

Others have an in-born wisdom that knows and believes in the good of people, no matter what a court may find.

The field of education is one of the most important areas of human life because all nations must be willing to teach their people the truth about their past.

The history Americans got in school is the glorification of the white race.

Much of the American history I was taught in public schools as a young person failed to include much information about the African-Americans in our midst.

We were never taught the social and economic reasons that white men brought Africans to North America as their slaves.

Though practices of Jim Crow were mentioned, we were not helped to understand the humiliations, injustices and mental and emotional agony that the new Africans and their descendants had to suffer and continue to undergo to this day.

Ricky Jackson served a 39 year prison sentence for a crime he did not commit.

Now that he is out of prison he has a lot of questions he must answer for himself.

Who am I really?

Once released from confinement he had to figure out where he would go to live, what he wanted to do the rest of his life.

Think of it..

He was sent to prison when he was 18.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

The State of Ohio finally found him innocent when Eddie Vernon, the man who testified against him years before was only 13.

Eddie Vernon recanted the testimony that originally sent Ricky Jackson to death row.

The stories that both Eddie Vernon and Ricky Jackson have to tell are dramatic and thought-provoking.

After forty years Eddie works at a 7-Eleven. He doesn’t have a car so has to get up very early in the morning and take two buses to his job.   He works all day and hasn’t the energy left to do much except to go home, have a bite to eat, flop into bed and say a few prayers.

When he shares with others what happened forty years ago, he takes off his thick, black rimmed glasses and almost invariably has to wipe his eyes to staunch the flow of tears.

Ricky and Eddie are related by the murder of a white man forty years ago. Because of his testimony, Eddie had felt the need for redemption, a high level ingredient that enables the substitution of light in the place of such dark emotions as self-pity, hatred, and anger.

In Eddie’s case it is likely that he had to deal with self-inflicted negativity because his testimony resulted in the imprisonment of three men for nearly forty years.

Eddie remembers a May afternoon forty years ago. He was on a school bus with his buddies. The bus windows were open and the kids were laughing and they heard two bullet shots.

Then a third blast jolted them. The kids on the bus saw a white man pant for air as he lay on the sidewalk.

Eddie told one of his buddies he thought Jackson was the one who pulled the trigger.

After he told the police, his story blew up into what was thought to be an eye-witness version of the shooting.

He thought that the police freely overlooked the abyss of non-clarity in his story.

The police were looking for a clue of condemnation that would lead to imprisonment.

“I was the one whose story gave them what would lead to a sentence.”

Hardship and illness followed Eddie Vernon for the next 17 years. Detectives told him he’d be better off if he’d leave town, so he went to New Jersey where loneliness became his constant companion.

Others urged him never to talk about the murder.

He seemed to fall into an abyss of dread and terror. He started drinking and when he returned to Cleveland he became involved with crack.

The more he tried to get ahead the more he seemed to move backwards.

He had a stroke and his kidneys were collapsing and he suffered from all kinds of physical problems including high blood pressure. He was even sent to prison for a time.

When he was released, he found Christianity which was a great source of help for him.

However, he found himself plagued by the ninth commandment: Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Eddie Vernon found what he sought—a God who would forgive him for his incorrect testimony. He met Ricky Jackson in his church and the two embraced and Eddie was forgiven. Yet Eddie still has to live with his mistake.

He is having a hard time forgiving himself.

Eddie moved back into his old boyhood neighborhood. It was in bad shape when he was a kid, but now it looks like a war zone it is so rundown.

Buildings are gone, streets are cracked, the pavement is gone in spots and filled with ruts.

Eddie meets Ricky Jackson occasionally and they have a simple dinner together at the pastor’s house.

In the last 40 years both men have been tested to accept what life has given them to deal with.

Now they can both put that behind them, even though a major lesson each had to learn was acceptance.

Each has experienced the emotional intensity of bitterness, hatred, disgust, and the gaping hole of endless frustration. The ability to accept a condition, situation or event does not mean being submissive or idle.

Click HERE to watch video of Ricky Jackson & Eddie Vernon first meet up.

The true healing aspect of acceptance is lived out by not fooling around or wasting time when they were living out the impossible, but doing work it takes to accomplish the impossible which in both Ricky’s and Eddie’s life was self-acceptance and self- esteem.

Ricky’s story is vastly different from Eddie’s even though he has been on death row and has spent 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Both men have traces of white hair now. Out of their fear and frustration, their sense of loneliness and separation must have been overwhelming at times.

Each man was alone in his need to understand the immensity and the awesomeness and yet remarkable problem of human existence.

Each in his own way was forced by his circumstances to confront his feelings of inadequacy.

Eddie is 52 years old now and has white hair in his beard. When he talks about Ricky Jackson, he speaks from his heart and says,

“I feel so bad about how I did those guys,”

Xian Sci Monitor Wkly, April 13, 2015. P. 34

Forgiveness is the central issue of this story.

Source: conejochurch.com

Eddie Vernon needs to be forgiven for giving false testimony that sent an innocent man to prison—even death row and Ricky Jackson needs to forgive.

Forgiveness signifies that an inner sacrifice is made. It is essentially giving up the separated self, an act that is supremely difficult for most of us. After all, the little ego wants to be right always.

For the human ego to forgive takes monumental effort. What is needed in this situation is unconditional forgiveness, the kind that Ricky Jackson is now capable of because his release from prison makes it possible for him to come from a position of tremendous power.

He has likely endured an experience so formidable that on one hand his very being was shattered by his life sentence and later he felt the relief of freedom and security when he was released.

Of course, his journey from being a young man, whose hopes and dreams were dashed to a mature man whose inner experience was but a shadow of the accepting mercy of the One.

The all-encompassing inner movement of unconditional forgiveness is an essential step we must all take, at least those who would serve humankind in one way or another.

Our need as humans is to live a life of humility, one that includes others, understands their needs and moves in ways that we know are intuitively sensed.

The radical solution of forgiveness becomes real and transformative because there is an important change of heart.

Such a level of unconditional love or forgiveness is possible for all of us, once we are willing to let our higher Selves out, like giving a team of horses the freedom to create their own pace and style.

The trick is to forgive past mistakes and to love. Just love, and ask the tremendous powers within to give us the humility to do it.

Rebecca Field
Communicator, Evolutionary Cosmologist & International Humanitarian Networker

Author of the book ‘To Choose the Fire of the Cosmos‘ with a foreword by the Dalai Lama

« To create a great spiritual rebirth we need to employ both the head and the heart. »