Picture my moment, if you will: I am standing on a speaking platform in a hall at Aiseiri treatment center in Ireland giving a talk for the general public about forgiveness. The hall is full — closer to 200 people than the 100 we were expecting to attend. There are the people you would expect to come — people that are in recovery like the intense young guys currently in treatment. Their shoulders are bowed and they are struggling out from under a dark cloak of shame. There are the quiet older gentlemen who passed through Aiseiri’s loving hands two decades before and have learned since then how to talk about their emotions inside the safe circle of hundreds of weekly AA meetings. There are bright and brisk middle-aged women who are eager to jump into all things related to personal growth and spirituality.

Then there are the people who are not in the self-help/recovery crowd, but it makes sense that they chose to come when they heard me talking about forgiveness on the radio. There is the exhausted woman with the ravaged face who just buried her husband three weeks ago after a horrible fight with a terminal illness. There is the tormented Catholic man and his wife who haven’t known a night’s sleep since they supported their daughter to get an abortion for a pregnancy resulting from a date rape. And the handsome sensitive man whose heart is sore and bruised from being in love with a woman who runs hot and cold towards him.

But then there are the people you don’t expect, like the stolid grumpy woman from town who doesn’t come out to public talks, and hasn’t spoken to gramma in seven years. And a few other people from the town who heard the radio show while they ran the grocery store or drove a taxi. Despite warnings from a friend who told me that from her experience, Irish people in a small town won’t risk the public vulnerability of raising their hands to ask a question or to share a thought, we have steady and courageous participation from this diverse crowd. Once we get over the initial hump of “OK, now we’re going to discuss something that might have to do with emotions!,” person after person hesitantly raises their hand and bravely speaks words that are quietly loaded with emotions.

But here’s the thing, about this moment for me: the audience in Ireland listens to the message about forgiveness with a unified intensity that I’ve never experienced from an audience in fifteen years of speaking about forgiveness in the United States. Somehow, even though I know that this is just a collection of individuals with their individual trunk of personal grievances and their individual free wills, just like every other audience I talk to, I have the uncanny sense that I am talking to an audience with a unified will, who is leaning forward in it’s chair, listening intently, as one. Even though I am speaking as one person to many others, all struggling with private dilemmas, their energy speaks back to me with a collective voice and it says "We are the Irish. As a people, we know we need to learn to forgive now and we are going to do it." And do you know, that even though the grumpy town woman casually told her friend that she could “take it or leave it” when asked if she liked the talk --- she went home that night and spoke to gramma for the first time in seven years!

When I did my work in Ireland last month, I felt my soul burning in my heart with a steady flame of love and satisfaction, and I always felt like I was in the right place, and completely supported by everything and everyone around me. I will be going back again next June to lead a forgiveness workshop and another training for counselors who want to use this method. I feel assured by my reception there that this is my life purpose, and not some grandiose missionary delusion of someone who longs to contribute to world peace in a significant way. Fear of grandiosity aside, there is a wild hope inside me that says maybe this forgiveness work will contribute to peace consciousness in the world in a significant way. And my soul tells me that Ireland is one place where this concept can take hold and contribute to the healing of a whole culture that sorely needs it. And as they were during the dark ages, this place can shine a lamp of civilization and higher consciousness again.

And why not? Ireland, a country the size of Indiana with a history of grief and tragedy, has a population that is ready for the concept of forgiveness at last. The Irish are a fierce and strong-willed and spiritual people, with a strong sense of “we” --- a sense of the collective self --- so different than here in the individualistic USA. They value information and education, and the personal growth movement there is accelerating now as rapidly as the economy did in the 90's. In the last few centuries, So much literature, music, and leadership has flowed out of the people on this tiny isle into the rest of the world, it’s not unreasonable to think that they can also put a needed concept like forgiveness to work with gusto! Maybe they can show the rest of us what real peacemaking looks like. You really can’t underestimate the potential of a people whose most frequently used adjectives are “lovely,” “brilliant,” and “grand!” I sense that there is a social transformation brewing now in Ireland that will light the way for other places that need to put a final end to the bitterness of war. It may not happen for another twenty five years, but I intend to be there!

If you have a dream, and a sense of life purpose, go for it!

- Mary