The path of repentance is one that can help us not only to repair what we have broken, but to grow in the process of doing so.

A person is not entitled to forgiveness if they haven’t done the work of repair.

Atonement is, in the framework of my tradition, something that happens in connection with the divine.

We need to summon the courage to cross the bridge...

I have struggled forgiving myself for not knowing how to create appropriate boundaries.

Every relationship is an ongoing story that unfolds between people.

Loving sometimes takes all that we have.

In our lives, people sometimes do us wrong.

12-Step recovery has provided me with perspective, forgiveness, and freedom from shame.

Can I love all of me, even the peevish parts?

Holding people accountable for the impact of their behavior is not revenge; it’s what makes change and growth possible, and no real healing in community can come without it.

Love cannot be bought or sold; it does not make a profit. Love does not hide from truth. Love dives deep. Love takes on flesh. Love is queer. Love is platonic. Love is erotic. Love is asexual. Love confronts evil. Love delights in pleasure. Love touches and weeps and flirts and feeds and creates.

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.

The work of forgiveness is so challenging—the actual work of it. The naming, grieving, empathizing, releasing. It’s like a death. A death of what we wanted, what we expected, what we’d hoped for, what we deserved and didn’t receive….We don’t get to control other people or outcomes. I am...

When I internalize cultural messages about the definitions of success or failure—or anything, really—I undermine my own sense of self-worth.

My soul nudged me from a hiding place to confess and to seek forgiveness, and only through the grace of the Great Mystery of Life unfolding around us did I receive the blessing of journeying with a beloved, grieving friend.

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me?

It is my only memory of a lesson from Kindergarten Sunday School class. Maybe it’s the only one that counts.

Spirit of Compassion, remind us that our task as humans is not perfection, but faithfulness.

As a child, growing up Catholic, my sense was that we should give away forgiveness like candy at Halloween: freely and readily, to anyone who comes asking. As an adult Unitarian Universalist, however, I have realized that forgiveness is a lot more complicated and challenging than that image would...