I Don't Feel Like Writing About Gratitude Today; How About Forgiveness Instead?

The Wild Hunt has an interesting post on the subject of forgiveness. The article that Jason links to discusses an interfaith Thanksgiving service that focused on how the Amish reacted to a recent horrific event that left many of their daughters dead in a school shooting. (How terrible is it that "school shooting" is now an understandable expression?)

Rabbi Irwin Goldenberg discussed "the remarkable news that the Amish community had forgiven him. ... We were awed. ... I can only thank the Amish people for being a model for us ... sharing with us that we are capable of forgiving."

The Rev. Kate Bortner of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of York, one of six members of the Interfaith Alliance of York, told the nearly 100 people attending the observance that the senseless murders of the Amish girls at the rural schoolhouse brought members of the alliance together.

The fellowship provided comfort to members of the alliance, she said.

The next day, "we realized, right then, that is what we needed to share with you this evening," Bortner said. "The Amish community showed us how to move through the unthinkable without violence. We come before you tonight with the opportunity to build a community of forgiveness and trust."

That's a remarkable phrase: to move through the unthinkable without violence. Thinking about it, I realized how this option never even seems to occur to, or to be an option for, Americans. Someone does something bad to us and we don't even consider if there is a way to "move through it without violence". Of course, the prime example would be the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Not only did we respond to "the unthinkable" with violence against Afghanistan, but we also applied what Richard Cohen recently (and obscenely) referred to as "therapeutic violence" against Iraq -- a country that didn't even attack us. It was as if attacking Afghanistan just wasn't "enough" -- we were so full of the need for revenge, so incapable of forgiveness -- that we still had to vent our spleen on someone else. And, or course, once in Iraq, we've found other things that "require" a violent response from us, which requires a violent response from the Iraqis, which . . . well, any eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Which is what makes the Amish response so revolutionary.

The Wild Hunt links to a Wikipedia article that explains how the Amish reacted to the school shooting:

CNN reported a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls said of the killer on the day of the murder: "We must not think evil of this man."

Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts," he told CNN.

The Amish have reached out to Roberts' family. Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them.

An article in a Canadian newspaper the National Post stated that the Amish have set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter.

Can you, at least for a moment, imagine what the world would be like if, following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, America's leaders had helped America to react in an Amish fashion? Refusing to think evil of the terrorists, reaching out to their families and extending forgiveness to them (if these words are literal, then the concept is weird: the families didn't do anything. I think what the Amish did was reach out to the shooter's family and express to them that the Amish forgave the shooter), and setting up a charitable fund for the terrorists' families and communities? What if we'd opened up serious dialogues with radical Islamics who support terrorists, perhaps headed by Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter? How would we have had to change? How would the radical Islamics? How would our allies? Would more people be alive today if we'd done something like this? Would Americans be safer?

I'm not a forgiving woman. I find forgiveness very difficult; it stirs up my shadow issues in an instant. There are things that happened to me decades and decades ago that I still struggle to let go of, to forgive. I've found, in my own struggles with forgiveness, that the more secure I feel, about my own self worth, about my own abilities, about my own ability to survive, the less trouble I have forgiving. I know that I'll probably work the rest of my life to try and become a more forgiving person. I hope that I can become more Amish in my outlook. I wish that America could do the same.