Summary: With Special Guest Shawne Duperon of Project Forgive How does the mother whose husband and daughter were gunned down by terrorists forgive the men that slaughtered them? How do the parents whose teenagers were killed by a drunk driver embrace the person whose selfish act robbed them of their children? And how do we forgive the multitude of wrongs a nd slights that we will inevitably face throughout our lives? Julie Ann's ConsciousSHIFT guest Reverend Mpho Tutu answers these questions with us - drawing from The Book of Forgiving: The Four-Fold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World - which she wrote along with her father, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu. Using real examples from their own lives and those of others around the globe, the Tutus share very personally: Desmond Tutu writing about the pain of witnessing his father’s verbal and physical abuse towards his mother as a young boy; and Mpho Tutu sharing about the trauma of finding her housekeeper, Angela, brutally murdered in her home. No one is better placed to offer guidance and hope in a turbulent world than the former Archbishop of Cape Town. Archbishop Desmond Tutu received world-wide recognition (and the Nobel Peace Prize) for the moral and spiritual leadership he gave in opposition to South Africa’s apartheid regime. Then in the post-apartheid era, President Nelson Mandela asked him to Chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which helped South Africa address the crimes committed during that era without bitter recrimination. The Tutus distill those lessons and the sequence of forgiveness into The Four-Fold Path: * the importance of telling the story, * naming the hurt, * granting forgiveness, and * choosing to either renew or release the relationship that caused you pain. Mpho also will share what forgiveness is not: forgiveness is not weakness, it is not a subversion of justice and it is not forgetting what happened. And it is not easy. She also will challenge the notion that the act of forgiveness is a sign of weakness or a lofty goal only the saintly can achieve. Instead, she and her father offer scientific proof that by pardoning others we help to heal ourselves physically, emotionally and mentally. Join Julie Ann and Mpho, as Mpho shares powerful stories, practices, prayers and journaling that give us the space and time – be it days, weeks, months or even years – to arrive at the place where we can forgive others, seek forgiveness or forgive ourselves.
