Reading around to widen this exploration of ‘forgiveness,’ I came across ideas that embrace forgiveness not just at the level of one human being to another or even one community to another but as one continent to another! Those ideas were expressed at the beginning of this century by Thomas Odihambo, one of the world's leading scientists from Africa. This was at a time when Thomas had encountered the ideas that led him to develop a sense of his own spiritual self as being an immortal entity, a soul, a child of God and, therefore, connected to all other souls. Thomas shares.
“As the idea settled in, I found myself mulling our situation in Africa in light of this new awareness. If we are all connected as souls and connected to God, then why are we not caring for one another? Why does poverty exist in the midst of the most revolutionary scientific discoveries and fantastic technological innovations in human history? Why is there so much revenge and retribution? Why is there so much aggressive competition?
About this time I began to work in a structured forum consisting of heads of state from different parts of Africa to look at this intensifying issue of poverty. I realized that it is not a question of economics, but rather a question of the direction of the focus. What are our intentions? How do we apply our core values, our love, and our commitment to our present and future?
In the last two years, I have come to believe that the real blockage to positive transformation of Africa is something quite subtle: the sense of hurt that has been here since the slave trade and the colonial period. How can we remove this hurt that has been with us for so long? Do we have to avenge the wrongs of this period in order to move ahead?
As I consider the idea of serving at a mental level, serving through thought energy and the kind of mind we must have in order to serve the world, I have become convinced that we in Africa are putting too much energy into the past, that we need to use our powers for the present and the future. We need to forgive and forget.
This is a very lonely position. As I began to speak with my colleagues about it, they raised all kinds of questions: How can we miss this opportunity of the North paying for what they did? Isn’t it right that they should contribute to our development? Isn’t it an accepted practice all over the world that if you do wrong, you pay a fine? Why shouldn’t we follow that route? If we were to follow this well-trodden route of revenge and reparation, the African Renaissance, which the implementation of new development practices presently promises, would likely not happen. What Africa needs, and indeed what the world as a whole needs, are a change from victim consciousness and a turning of the back to the practice of reparation. I have come to believe that asking the North to pay won’t bring about any transformation for them or for us.
We are on a memory lane re-constituting the pain of our ancestors, creating an environment of revenge. We need to get out of this memory lane and be in the present lane. The past is an episode of the past. Accept defeat, forgive, and begin to heal the scars. Only this, I believe, will remove the most significant blockage to our development. After that, we will move very fast because a sacred place will have been created in our hearts and minds.”
While the ideas Thomas proposes are at a continental level, they do of course relate to the individual for the shift at the macro level is the result of aligned attitude of the micro level - its individuals.
