Discovering Forgiveness: Pathways Through Injury, Apology, and Healing

Drawing from many fields, Discovering Forgiveness provides an accessible and interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of forgiveness while generating practical applications.Dunn employs powerful metaphors, striking analogies, poignant stories, and personal reflections to uncover the many layers of injury, apology and healing. A nuanced, complex, accessible and satisfying treatment of a difficult practice. -Elaine Enns, author, Ambassadors of Reconciliation (2009); www.bcm-net.orgForgiveness is perhaps the least understood concept in the lexicon of both peacemaking and theology. Dunn lights a candle to illuminate the spider's web of forgiveness, helping us see the complex, imperfect, and delicate strands that forgiveness holds together to catch the gift of humility, apology, and reconciliation.-Lisa Schirch, Director of Human Security, The Alliance for Peacebuilding; Research Professor, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite UniversityDunn encourages the reader to move beyond simplistic forgiveness (I apologize, I forgive you, please forgive me, lets forgive and forget) to explore, understand, and value their present understanding and practice of forgiveness while searching for the simplicity that lies beyond the complexity. Reading and reflecting on this well researched and very readable work will certainly move the reader along their journey toward discovering forgiveness. -Ron Classen, Professor Emeritus, Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, Fresno Pacific University PDunn offers a stream of provocative stories-of real people in honest conversations. For me, these stories create a deep grounding in both the potential and the complexity, the challenges and the actual examples, of how forgiveness emerges and finds expression. -John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peacebuilding, University of Notre Dame, in the ForewordThe Author: Larry A. Dunn, Fresno, California, is Associate Professor at the Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, Fresno Pacific University. He has worked for nearly 30 years as a mediator, trainer, consultant, and educator in the field of conflict resolution. Dunn holds a masters degree in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a PhD in social science from Syracuse University.Discovering Forgiveness is volume 2 in Cascadia's Theological Postings Series and follows volume 1, The Jesus Factor in Justice and Peacemaking, by C. Norman Kraus