Parabola's Fall 1987 issue: Forgiveness The contributors to this issue, with the founders of all the great traditions, affirm that each person is linked to every other, that existence is shared, that as Father Thomas Hopko says in our conversation with him in this issue, "my life is yours, and your life is mine," a gift from the same source.    And yet the concrete experience of this irrefutable connection is rare. Why is this so? What stands in the way of recognizing the reality in which we have our being?    Certainly the traditions declare that access to a higher level is always offered, always a possibility. In the words of one hadith, "whoever approaches me walking, I will come running...." What is the way to that approach? And why does the open door appear to us as shut?    It is the closed door, of course, that brings the need for forgiveness. Estrangement makes us feel the loss of bonds we may hardly have noticed before. The loss of friendship, alienation from a family member, a sense of being cut off from the vital current of life creates suffering. This suffering can be the fire that refines, that brings the drives of the ego in contact with a deeper self, that ultimately starts us "walking," bringing us to the first steps of the exchange that is called forgiveness. --from the editorial Focus Cover: Detail of the head of Christ From The Resurrection of Lazarus, Chichester Cathedral Scala/Art Resource, New York In this issue:

• "This Word Forgiveness" by D. M. Dooling
  - The past transcended
• "The Dream People" by Alan McGlashan
  - A glimpse of paradise
• "On Forgiving Oneself" by P. L. Travers
  - Lifting the veil
• "The God You Touch" by Ann Belford Ulanov
  - Consequences of incarnation
• "To Whom Much Was Forgiven" by Paul J. Tillich
  - The source of reconciliation
• "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew" by James Baldwin
  - Redeeming the "cities of destruction"
• "Living in Communion"
  - An interview with Father Thomas Hopko
• ARCS: "I Will Come Running"
• "The Art of Return" by Colin Bag
  - Cultivating the quality of weakness

Tangents - Reviews

• "A Forest without End" by Jonathan Cott
  - Peter Brook talks about The Mahabharata
• "The Shock of Conscience" by Rob Baker
  - A review of Les Misv©rables

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "Neilah in Gehenna" / Jewish
• "The Hermit" / Islamic
• "What the Snake Had in Mind" / Japanese Buddhist
• "The Holy Anchorite of Bhutan" / Tibetan Buddhist
• "The Horseman and the Snake" / Islamic