“Forgiveness is the habit of non-retaliation; or better, it is the judgment non-retaliation renders. We cannot forgive virtues. We forgive only sins. But as it issues its condemnation of sin, as it resolutely names a violation that cannot be undone, forgiveness also accepts that past as unalterable and so imagines what possibilities for the future its battered history might bear.
If forgiveness is more mourning than miracle, a manner of living with rather than magically fixing a broken past, then its posture is paradoxically forward facing. Since forgiveness addresses the past so unflinchingly, it also necessarily and paradoxically sets itself honestly toward whatever future can actually come to be in the wake of that past. In attempting to find the past's wrongs livable even if irrevocable, forgiveness requires and inspires imagination.”