One assignment our Summer Seminary (#UUSumSem) program students receive is writing a 3-5 minute homily based on a prompt. On Saturday night they presented their homilies to each other, and then voted to select the five they wanted to represent their class during worship on Sunday Morning at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, CA. Here Summer Seminarian Zollie Davis-Huntley examines the links between the those who hurt and those who are hurt that lead to healing. Watch now as Zollie Davis-Huntley Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Summer Seminary 2016 Grad delivers her homily, “The Irrationally Beautiful Place”, during First Unitarian Church of Oakland, CA. Sunday Worship:

Learn about Summer Seminary, a program of the UUA Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries

Read the transcript of Zollie’s homily:

Learn about Summer Seminary, a program of the UUA Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries

Read the transcript of Zollie’s homily:

ZOLLIE DAVIS-HUNTLEY: I was taught once by a good friend of mine the difference between the words, it's OK, and, I forgive you. The first of these two sentiments erases the accountability of the victimizer. It is to say that there is no wrong to be sorry for and to invalidate the pain that that wrong caused. Yet I am, we are often guilty of using these words as a placeholder for forgiveness. Perhaps it is because it is hard to say that all is forgiven before those words ring true. And saying its OK is a vague and easily misunderstood way to avoid the inability to speak and untruth.

So where are the words to say that I have heard your apology in the deepest cavity of my being, but I have not yet forgiven you and I cannot know when I will. And why does it feel like holding a grudge? Forgiveness cannot exist without first the acknowledgment of the pain and then the healing there of. Forgiveness sits like the destination of a long awaited road trip that we cannot reach without the journey. And the journey may be short or long, and it may take seconds or years. But the journey must be taken because if it is not, we allow ourselves to petrify and become beings who cannot and will not change.

It isn't about the gratification of those who have caused pain, but rather about those on whom they have inflicted it. We all live the lives of the forgiver and the forgiven. We live in a paradoxical state of causing and being. But it is an irrationally beautiful place to be. And sometimes, forgiveness comes without reconciliation. Sometimes, in allowing ourselves to forgive and change, we become so far from the people we were that we can no longer exist in the state of being in which we lived before. And that, too, can be an irrationally beautiful place.

Isn't it inherently human to be wounded, to heal, and eventually, to forgive? Thank you.