Thanks to Robin A. Edgar, Charlotte campaign conversation facilitator, for submitting this inspiring entry.

The Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools in 1954, but it took three years for Southern states to comply-sort of. In Charlotte, dozens of black children volunteered to attend white schools but the school board rejected all but four. On Sept. 4, 1957, Dorothy Counts (Dot Counts-Scoggins today) walked down the hill to Harding High School.

Approaching a wall of screaming and spitting white students, she thought of what her father, Herman Counts, always told his family–”Hold your head high.” The wall parted to let her pass.

Woody Cooper was in the crowd. A good student, he was already accepted to The Citadel and his dad, a Charlotte policeman, told him, “Don’t get involved.” So Woody just stood and watched Dot come down the hill, walking right past him while his classmates cursed at her and called her names.

The photo that Don Sturkey took of that day for the Observer was eventually seen around the world. Over the years, when Woody looked at the picture, he realized that failing to help Dot that day was the same thing as hurling insults at her.

In 2006, after Woody’s Sunday School lesson about sins of omission, he told his class that he felt he had failed to do right by Dorothy Counts. The very next day, the Observer ran a story about Dorothy and Woody sent an e-mail to the reporter. The reporter forwarded it to Dot.

Dot and Woody, who are now friends, will be the guests of honor at the dedication of the Red Bench of Love in Charlotte’s Garden of Love and Forgiveness on June 10, 2010. We invited them to be the first to sit on this symbol from our four-year Campaign for Love & Forgiveness. We hope others will visit our Bench and Garden and take the time to find love and forgiveness in their hearts and lives as well.

A few weeks ago, a fundraiser was held for Sheryl Stack, widow of Joe Stack who crashed a plane into an office building in Austin, Texas, where IRS employee Vernon Hunter was killed. What makes this unusual was the participation of performers from the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church where Hunter was a member.

“My heart grieves for the loss of life caused by my husband in the tragic events of Feb. 18, 2010,” Sheryl Stack said in her first public comments since the crash. “My prayers are continually with the widow and family of Vernon Hunter, and I pray also for Shane Hill and all the others who were injured and or traumatized by this catastrophe.”

Reaching across the pain and loss caused as a result of Joe Stack’s actions to help Sheryl Stack and her daughter show a great deal of compassion. Read more about this event in the statesman.com article.

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person–when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance–can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.
–Jacob Needleman

On the day after Thanksgiving, November 27, 2009, StoryCorps is asking all Americans to start a new holiday tradition: Set aside one hour to interview a friend, a loved one, or someone in your community about his or her life.

The process is simple: select an interview partner, create a question list, and sit down to record a meaningful conversation. StoryCorps has created a free Do-It-Yourself (DIY) interview guide with step-by-step interview instructions, equipment recommendations, and sample questions available online at www.nationaldayoflistening.org.

In addition to the campaign film, The Power of Forgiveness, below are two films that explore the topic of forgiveness.  For even more film selections that explore both love and forgiveness, check out the Resources section of our web site.

Forgiveness, a 2004 South African film, explores forgiveness, revenge, and redemption in the aftermath of the apartheid regime. “An ex-policeman haunted by the torture and murder he committed during South Africa’s apartheid years, makes the long journey to the small fishing town of Paternoster, to beg forgiveness of the family of his victim–slain 21-year-old freedom fighter, Daniel Grootman.”

It’s hard to imagine what could possibly justify throwing acid in the face of young women–because they choose to attend school, aren’t dressed modestly enough, refuse advances of a suitor, break up with a boyfriend, or are the victims of domestic violence. But this happens too frequently, in South Asian countries primarily, but also in other countries throughout the world.

Remarkably, a young woman in Kampala, Uganda, who suffered one of these excruciating and disfiguring attacks decided to forgive her attacker–her former boyfriend. Juliette’s story is featured in Ode Magazine with a link to a Blip TV video. A beautiful young mother, she remarkably chose to forgive her attacker and helps others who’ve been attacked, while living in poverty herself. “You have to be strong,” she says, “you have to believe in yourself.” Little does she know how many people she is helping people by sharing her story, her strength, and forgiveness.

The Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC) is another wonderful example of how one person’s vision, combined with love, ingenuity, persistence and creativity, can make a huge difference. Jeremy Courtney, his wife, Jessica and their friend, Cody Fisher, started PLC in 2007 after witnessing the rampant heart disease among children in Iraq. According to their site, “experts think that Saddam Hussein’s 281 chemical attacks and experiments on the Kurds of northern Iraq contribute to the high rate of life-threatening heart disease among children in the region today.” Their mission is “to eradicate the backlog of 3,000 Arab and Kurdish children waiting in line for life-saving heart surgery.” One way they are doing this is by selling Kurdish handcrafted shoes called klash through their “Buy shoes. Save lives.” campaign. Their work, their site, and the stories of the children they help is worth checking out.

“We in the West, just as Rwandans, desperately need to understand forgiveness.  We live in a violent world filled with conflicts.  Political polarization, terrorist attacks, racial tensions, immigration fears, and school shootings define our national landscape.  Meanwhile, privately, we struggle with broken marriages, splintered relationships, and doubts that pierce us to the core.  Could there be a common road map to reconciliation,” writes Catherine Larson in As We Forgive.

It’s hard to even fathom the possibility of forgiving such travesties as the Rwandan genocide. But fifteen years later, it is happening, one person at a time. As We Forgive, a film about the journey of forgiveness, is now a book (As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation) by Catherine Larson. Read a review by the Englewood Review of Books.

“If forgiveness is an art, then we should be able to talk about the tools, the skills, and the raw materials with which the artist must become acquainted,” wrote Sunny Jacobs, who spent 26 years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. In the first edition of THE A WORD: an arts magazine, compiled by and written for ex-prisoners, stories of extraordinary forgiveness focus on the art of forgiveness.

Roselle Kovitz, a contributing writer for the Campaign for Love & Forgiveness, is traveling in nothern Thailand with Toys for Thailand volunteers, who are providing support to schools for poor, orphaned, and abandoned hill tribe children in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son.

His unassuming, quiet presence belied the fact he’s a warrior. He cares for, advocates for, and fights for his 250 young students. Gray-haired and sweet-mannered, Mr. Tana, runs a school 45 minutes from the small town of Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand. Nestled in a picture postcard-worthy forest region near the Burmese border, he manages a remote school for hill tribe children.

In the short time I spent with him (and information from Sasha Bilar, the director of Toys for Thailand and our translator) he seems creative in looking for avenues to greater self sufficiency for the school. On a terraced hillside, the children grow organic vegetables. When the yield is big enough to feed the school children and have a surplus, they will sell the remainder to local residents. Banana and teak trees line walks and the roadway. Each have a small sign with the name of the child who cares for it.

Toys for Thailand previously funded a number of small projects for this school, such as water filtration. He now asks for a stud pig, among other requests. The pig would be a money maker as well as produce the raw material for fertilizer.

Mr. Tana is not simply a good administrator, according to those who know his work, but he clearly has a big heart. The day he took us to the school, we watched the children as they filed in for lunch. One girl, her nose running and eyes downcast, sat at the end of one of the benches. As Mr. Tana passed her, he stopped and softly stroked her head. That small gesture spoke of a caring that goes beyond that of an abstract administrator.

For him, the job seems to be worth financial and personal hardship—leaving his family hours away and seeing them only days a month.

Mr. Tana is only one of the many unsung heroes we met visiting schools for hill tribe children. These schools—with decaying and primitive infrastructure, few books or other materials—have so little to work with, it’s amazing they function at all. Mr. Tana and other administrators and teachers like him, give hope to those who might otherwise be hopeless. And like his fellow angels, he is humble. When I thanked him, his eyes lit up, he laughed, and then bowed his head in the Thai tradition.

As a result of their participation in campaign conversations, Maryland Public Television’s Campaign for Love & Forgiveness partner, Friends of the Northeast Interfaith Peace Garden, built and dedicated a Garden of Forgiveness last summer.  Their local CBS affiliate, WJZ, covered a profound story of forgiveness told at the dedication ceremony. Below is an excerpt and link to the full story.

“Jessica Vetter was killed in a motorcycle accident. But her death brought the person responsible for her death and her father together.” Jeffrey Vetter, Jessica’s father, forgave Michael Jacoby, who while driving drunk, caused the accident that killed Jessica. How did this happen, when as Jeffrey admits, he was initially mean, angry, nasty and vengeful? This is another astounding story of forgiveness that has changed both Michael and Jeffrey in deep ways. The short wjz.com article gives an overview of the story, but also posted on the Web page are the full interviews with both men, recorded for the television report and worth watching.