Forgiveness Works

Create for yourself and to share with others your thoughts, experiences, designs and more on the subject of Forgiveness. Click here to submit a description of your Forgiveness Garden. Please send any photos of your garden, marked with your name to the following address: Jampolsky Outreach Foundation, 98 Main Street, #777, Tiburon, CA, U.S. 94920

We look forward to sharing the wonderful work people are doing around the world with Forgiveness Gardens and other creative expressions.

The following article is a beautiful example of the kind of work being done today.

ArtEsteem Community Forgiveness Garden

In 1981, nine year old Amana helped launch JOF’s Children As Teachers Of Peace Project with Jehan Sadat. Today she is an art teacher who is Director of the award winning ArtEsteem Program at the Attitudinal Healing Connection in Oakland, California. Together with inner city kids and local schools, Amana Harris has created a Forgiveness Garden and has used it as a metaphor for the youth to experience and maintain “peace, love, and forgiveness in their lives.” The following is a sampling of their inspiring curriculum:

Steps of Forgiveness
There will be 7 Stages of Forgiveness taking place throughout the ArtEsteem Community Forgiveness Garden. These seven stages represent steps taken by individuals to maintain peace, love and forgiveness in their lives. This is a process of rebirthing and awakening through a renewal of thought and consciousness, through gardening.

Step One
This will be the stage of uncovering and revealing issues in our lives that are blocking peace and keeping us in a place of resentment and fear. We will identify and bring forth issues of distrust, hurt and pain in our heart and consciousness. These are areas that we know need some healing, letting go and forgiveness. We carry these issues and bad feelings around and they are constantly getting in the way of us living fully in the present moment. This will be a time when we will unravel, shuffle through and dig up these feeling and issues. This will take place through weeding, leveling the ground and digging the pond. As we do these tasks we will mentally put ourselves in this space.

Step Two
This will be the stage of putting all of these thoughts, feelings and issues into perspective from a space of love and forgiveness. When we start looking at conflict from a place of love and forgiveness, we can identify individuals, situations and incidents as “either extending love or giving a call for help.” At this point we begin to address these issues and put them into perspective. This will take place through putting all elements and objects of the garden into its place. We will put the garden box, tires, and bathtub in their most effective positions and places.

Step Three
This will be the stage of planting the seeds of forgiveness, peace and love. We will bury resentment and pain while planting the seed that will help and free us from grievances. This will take place when each individual plants a seed, seedling, start, or plant.

Step Four
This will be the stage of nurturing the planted seed of forgiveness, as well as the garden as a whole. The seed must be nurtured to grow and prosper. This is a way to keep forgiveness present, current and growing in our lives. Nurturing the forgiveness and peace seed or seedling will also help us remember this process. This nurturing will take place through watering, weeding, and keeping the garden beautiful and growing. This stage is also symbolic of keeping and sustaining life through nurturing.

Step Five
This will be the stage of harvest. We will gather the gifts represented as fruits, vegetables and herbs from our process and steps of forgiveness. These are the gifts from hard work and labor in our efforts to live our lives to the fullest.

Step Six
This will be the stage of sharing. We will share our gifts of forgiveness with those we know. Those that we share with will consume our gifts of forgiveness. Sharing forgiveness will hopefully touch the hearts of all we know, love and care about.

Step Seven
This is the stage of having the ability to recycle this process. As individuals we are constantly working on maintaining peace, we will always be able to go to the first step of forgiveness in the realm of gardening.