Students learn to forgive in MET course
Yael Maxwell
Issue date: 4/23/07 Section: News
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"If you're connected to revenge," said Peace Abbey Chaplain Dot Walsh, "you create the disconnect [of] unifying people."
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings one week ago, forgiveness may be the answer, said BU professor Ruth Henderson, who has offered an interdisciplinary class on forgiveness since fall 2005 in the Metropolitan College Prison Education Program.
The course, "The Experience of Forgiveness: Psychological, Sociological and Spiritual Perspectives," introduces college students to the approach of forgiveness by examining personal experiences while reading works of prominent figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. Aside from inmates in the Prison Education Program, the course is being taught to MET students.
"Forgiveness is not a theory, it is an experience," she said in an email. "It is more than an intellectual activity, it involves the heart . . . the soul and . . . it is also a sociological phenomenon."
The class, which has 11 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students this semester, also meditates together and takes field trips to places such as the The Peace Abbey in Sherborn. Henderson said she created the course to help students recognize how forgiveness can have an impact on society and to help students with their own spiritual development.
"Most university courses don't offer students the opportunity to engage in this kind of reflection," she said.
The meditation helps teach the class about experiences in forgiveness by relieving tension, said MET graduate student Helena Castanheira.
"As a group, we have learned to connect to the other's experience and let go of all the tension," she said in an email. "It was a very good revelation that this type of behavior can in fact be learned."
MET night student Ken Tebbetts said the class uncovered and enabled him to exercise some concepts related to forgiveness.
