Article June 12, 2000 Issue

Forgiveness

not always easy, but always productive

By Kim Shippey

MICHAEL HENDERSON IS an English journalist, broadcaster, and author, who has lived for more than twenty years in Portland, Oregon. He has worked in thirty countries, and knows personally many of the people he includes in his eighth and latest book, Forgiveness: Breaking the Chain of Hate (Book Partners).

This collection of real-life stories demonstrates how forgiveness can bring peace, reconciliation, and hope to the lives of people who have been wronged. It opens with an extract from an address given by Father Andrija Vrane at an international interreligious seminar in Banja Luka, Croatia, in 1998: "Forgiving means bidding goodbye to evil, in order not to be guided by it any more.... Forgiveness gives me freedom to love now.... In forgiving we do not lose anything, rather we receive a gift."

During a recent conversation with Mr. Henderson, we asked him why he had chosen this extract as his starting point.

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