Forgiveness has a pace of its own, and sometimes the most honest thing we can do is admit we're not there yet. This episode explores what it means to give ourselves (and each other) permission to be in process, without the pressure to be further along than we actually are.  LINKS:Book of Forgiving  |  Connect  |  YouTube  |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT:Brief framing before reading:We're talking about forgiveness in this series. About what happens when someone hurts us — or when we hurt someone else. And about the choices we have when that happens.I'm going to read you the first half of a book today. We're going to stop in the middle on purpose because the most important part of the story for TODAY is actually what happens right... here. And we're going to finish it next week.Read first half of Wally and Freya.Brief unpack after reading:What's happening in the story: someone got hurt. Both of them, actually. And now they have a choice.Two roads: get even, stay hurt… OR something harder, and maybe even braver.Forgiveness doesn't always happen right away. It takes practice. And the very first steps are: tell somebody you trust what happened, and then tell about what it felt like.When somebody does something that hurts me, I feel sad, and kind of mad. Sometimes it feels like I don’t matter much to them. Just saying that out loud is an important thing to do!In the story, Wally and Freya are both sad. Both hurt. And now they have a choice to make. So do we. We'll find out what they choose next week.The Stone — Kids PracticeGive each child a stone.This stone is like the hurt we carry when someone has hurt our feelings, or our bodies, or our hearts. It has some weight to it, just like the hurt does.You can return to your seats and work in their special kids Sunday Paper:Trace the stone on the paper.Inside the tracing, write or draw what the hurt is.Hold onto your stone. We're going to do something with it in a few minutes, everybody together.You can also listen in to what I’m saying, if you want to hear more about forgiving!Catching Everybody Up//RecapWelcome anyone who is new or wasn't here Week 1. I want to do a brief recap:We're in a series called The Book of Forgiving, drawing from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho's important work on what forgiveness actually is, and how to do it.The Tutus aren't theorists. Desmond Tutu chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mpho lost her husband to violent crime. These are people who have earned the right to talk about this.Their framework is called the Fourfold Path: Telling the Story → Naming the Hurt → Granting Forgiveness → Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.In wk 1 we looked at the first step: Telling the Story. Today: Naming the Hurt.The big idea underneath all of it: We desperately need an imagination bigger than the revenge cycle we live inside culturally. That cycle is everywhere— in our politics, our entertainment, our instincts. The Tutus show us a different road.The Problem with How We Do ForgivenessLet's be honest about why forgiveness is so hard to practice, even for people who believe in it.We've collapsed forgiveness into remorse. Someone says "sorry!"— maybe genuinely, maybe not— and suddenly the pressure shifts entirely to the person who was hurt: Now you have to forgive. We skip the whole middle. That's not forgiveness. That's cruel urgency dressed up as something kind.We've made forgetting the goal. But the Tutus are clear: forgetting is not only impossible, it's actually counterproductive. Memory is part of how we protect ourselves. Part of how we stay honest. Forgiveness is not amnesia.We've weaponized it. In religious spaces especially, "forgive" has been used to protect people who caused harm and to silence people who were hurt. When forgiveness gets wielded as a command that bypasses accountability — when it becomes "Jesus says you have to forgive, so stop talking about what hap