Lifestyles Ideas Management - Coffee forgiveness

Ivo Markovic, a Franciscan monk from Bosnia, was caught in the whirlwind of war in the mid-1990s in which the Croats, Bosnian and Serbs were fighting each other with blood. Bosnians had massacred twenty one men from Susanj, the village in which Markovic was born. Nine of them were members of his family – all feeble senior citizens, innocent of any crimes, and the youngest of whom was his seventy one years old father.
Three years after the massacre, Markovic visited Susanj. Occupying the house in which his brother used to live was a fierce Muslim woman. He was warned not to go there because she brandished a rifle to protect her new home.
He went anyway. As he approached the house she was waiting for him, cigarette in her mouth and rifle cocked. She barked:” Go away, or I will shoot you.” “No, you won’t shoot me,” said Markovic in a gentle but firm voice, “You will make a cup of coffee for me.” She stared at him for a while and then slowly put the rifle down and went to the kitchen. Taking the last bit of coffee she had, she mixed in some already used grounds to make enough coffee for two cups. And they, deadly enemies began to talk as they partook in the ancient ritual of hospitality: drinking coffee together. She told him of her loneliness, of the home she had lost, of the son who never returned from the battlefield. When Markovic returned a month later she told him: “I rejoice at seeing you as much as if my son had returned home.”
Did they talk about forgiveness?
I don’t know. And in a sense, it doesn’t matter.
He, the victim came to her asking for hospitality in his brother’s home, which she unrightfully possessed. And she responded. Though she greeted him with a rifle, she gave him a gift and came to rejoice at this presence. The humble, tenuous beginnings of a journey toward embrace were enacted through a ritual of coffee drinking. If the journey continues, it will lead through the difficult terrain of forgiveness. Anyone care for a cup of coffee?