Some Reflections on One-Sided Conflict and Forgiveness
By Jacob Stone
Friends testimonies and practices all derive from the idea that we can seek and find that of the divine in everyone, and that we can resolve many of our differences if we approach them with love, respect and perseverance. Many of us have had the profound experience of finding a renewal of love, respect and friendship when we have labored with others in good faith. When this happens we understand conflict as a transformative gift that brings new depth and warmth to our relationships. I have been greatly enriched by these reconciliations in my family, my work life and my meeting. There’s another side to this, though. When Friends discuss conflict and conflict resolution it is likely—in fact virtually certain—that someone will bring up the issue of an interpersonal struggle with someone who declines to labor in good faith over the difference. This refusal could be based on any of a number of factors: fear, justified or unjustified extreme anger, a need to dominate or demean, or an inability to empathize, etc. Whatever the reason, the person who won’t or can’t labor in good faith over a conflict leaves others with a special challenge: how can we find the divine in this individual who seems to be so focused on maintaining distance? How can this seemingly intractable problem be a divine gift? What good can come of this sort of ugly situation? Even more importantly, how can we remain in the same meeting, or family, or workplace, with that person? How can we effectively serve on a committee with this person who has been so disrespectful to us and to Friends processes?
It is so tempting to keep at that person to see if we can change the situation, or to avoid him/her, or to invoke the venerable silent treatment that we all learned in second grade. I confess to having these impulses, and sometimes acting on them, usually to no good end.
But what do our testimonies lead us to do? Our central testimony of finding the divine everywhere can lead us in a useful direction, if we use it as a path to forgiveness.
When I think about forgiveness I am referring to a model of forgiveness that has been described by Sue Regen, of Rochester Meeting in New York Yearly Meeting, in her wonderful program, “Forgiveness as a Spiritual Discipline.” When she presented this program at Ben Lomond Quaker Center in December 2006 she offered the insight that forgiveness is ultimately something that we do ourselves, by ourselves, without any expectation that the other person will manifest any remorse, desire for reconciliation, or changed insight. I learned that one way to look at forgiveness is to see it as a time when I can release my anger at the person and free myself for better thought and action.
This forgiveness doesn’t imply that the “other” is going to change, and it doesn’t mean that a restoration of friendship and trust is necessarily coming. I may still have to be wary and self-protective around the other person, but in an act of personal forgiveness I have found a way to be faithful to our testimonies.
With a dissipation of anger I am more able to respond with greater warmth and openness to that person, to seek the divine in that person, and keep looking for a way to add mutual reconciliation to my personal act of forgiveness, even while being self-protective.
This isn’t easy, and I haven’t always succeeded at it. Sometimes it takes time, whether measured in weeks or years, but it is a worthwhile journey. It represents an ideal that we can all strive for, a response to the non-participating person that honors the most fundamental principle of Quakerism and looks toward a possibility, however faint it might be, that trust can be restored.
Jacob Stone and his wife Gretta are longtime members of Doylestown Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and have been leading couples enrichment programs through the FGC Couples Enrichment Program for the past twelve years. They are currently serving as co-directors of the Ben Lomond Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, California, and sojourning at Santa Cruz Friends Meeting in Pacific Yearly Meeting. Before coming to California they served for a year as Friends in Residence at Chena Ridge Friends Meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska. They are also founding members of the bluegrass and folk band Faith and Practice.
