Nekyia's Threshold

subject:
Grace Under Fire
post date:
2007-10-03 07:33:58
views: 19 comments: 0 ratings: 0

I wrote the blog below a year ago. I literally sobbed as I did it. Today a book entitled "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy" explores the phenomenom that touched me so powerfully a year ago. A question was asked of the person that observed the Amish and wrote the book:"What can Americans learn from the Amish understanding of forgiveness as it was expressed after the Nickel Mines shooting?"Answer: "...Even though forgiveness is a complicated and difficult thing, if we approach it with the support of other people - the Amish do everything in community, including their grieving - and if we don't feel like we have to have all the emotions sorted out before we extend compassion, the road to forgiveness is easier. Reaching out in compassion to others in the faith that the difficult emotional work will follow, I think, is one of the things that they demonstrate.In our world today, religion is so often used as a force for division, and here is an example of religion being used for compassion and healing..."Amen... (and so below are my thoughts on that child massacre and the amazing grace that the Amish extended.)October 10, 2006 - Tuesday 8:18 PM - Oh, the HUMANITY I watch the world with wonder. We all carry out our little lizard brain directives of feeding, fucking, fighting, and fleeing under the warmth of the same burning sun and the silvering of the same mysterious moon. Some of us rise above the atavistic impulses and bring the divine just a little closer into the world. Its all a matter of choice and free will. The milkman's baby daughter died 20 minutes after she was born. He was filled with rage and hatred towards a God that would let him suffer such a loss. Nine years later he went into an Amish schoolhouse and killed innocent little girls, then himself. Two of the girls offered their lives freely to sate his rage, hoping mercy would be shown to the others. In Columbine two boys took aim and killed classmates. One asked a girl cowering under a table, "Do you believe in God?" She answered, "Yes." She died. The boys killed themselves.Rage and pain filled the hearts of the people of Columbine. Pity and humanity filled the souls of others. Crosses were erected on a hilltop to stand silent witness to the souls lost. The crosses representing the boys that pulled the trigger were torn down.In the Amish farmlands more than half the attendees at a murderous man's funeral were the very people who had lost their innocent young girls. They reached out with love and compassion to the innocence left behind within the family of the murderer - his daughters and wife. Choices. Neither choice made in either horrific tragedy/scenario of victimization made a damn bit of difference to what had happened. Nobody miraculously rose from their coffin, renewed and revived. No further understanding into the incomprehensible motivations of the perpetrators was given in a booming message from the divine on high. I look at the choices made and I literally weep at the bitter sweet joy I feel when true forgiveness, love, mercy, and acceptance are shown. There's hope.