Currently, one thing I can't yet fathom and continue to grapple with is when a person or peoples' capacity for forgiveness is huge and enveloping on that of a national scale such as in S. Africa or Rwanda.

What I don't understand is my own construct of, "yeah, I might be able to forgive, but when do the bastards get theirs and that has to happen before full forgiveness can come into play?"

When I see all of these reconciliation processes going on elsewhere in the world, my American mind struggles with how can the victimized forgive those that have done such terrible things. Then this is further troubling when it should have been clear when these people were committing these horrible acts, that they should have known these acts were horrible at the time (and possibly unforgivable).

My point is that, I think to those of us that have this "struggle" of holding on to our lack of forgiveness for these bastards (which would be miniscule in contrast to one's capacity for forgiveness) is a way to illustrate the magnanimity of such people and just how important people like Nelson Mandela are/were, because people such as this do have an outlook that does not come along often in one's lifetime and through their lives, they are able to achieve such things.