Go to this people and say, you will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent, and they will listen!
Acts 28: 26-28
Many of you have probably seen the articles about 26 Acts. Ann Curry, NBC news anchor, has launched a personal campaign encouraging folks to engage in 26 Acts of Kindness for the children and teachers killed in Newton, CT.
I was immediately taken with this idea but then, wait. Weren’t there 28 people killed that day? The children, the teachers, the shooter, Adam Lanza and his mother Nancy? I applaud the intention behind this campaign but am so struck by our collective willingness to blame even if only by our silence or omission. I can’t help but be reminded of the 2006 shootings in the Amish community of Nickel Mines in Southern Lancaster County.
The parents and families of the young girls who were bound and executed in their school house attended the shooter’s, Charles Roberts, funeral. They shared their grief with the young widow and his parents. They were saddened by the brokenness and his corrosive anger that drove him to such actions, but they did not lay shame on him or his family.
Author, Donald Kraybill wrote of that community and their response, “When we experience an injustice it’s easy to allow rage, resentment, and revenge to fill our hearts. An embrace of forgiveness brings freedom. Until we can move to forgiveness, we are held hostage to events of the past or to the acts of a perpetrator. In other words, we are emotionally obsessed by the fact that someone has wronged us. The Amish would say that we should not wait for an apology from our offender because it may never come.”
For those families who are still in the deep process of grieving, this may not be possible and I for one could not ask that of them. But those of us who have some distance, those who are deeply changed by such tragedy, what would it look like if we started to forgive Adam, his mother, his father, the law-makers and all the people and things we blame for this tragedy? Would that begin to set us, as a country, as people, free?
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I don’t write of forgiveness lightly. In the same year that Nickel Mines occurred, I was working in Burundi, Africa. I collected stories from Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, genocide survivors and perpetrators. Day in and day out I recorded personal accounts of the most horrific acts one human being can commit against an another.
At the end of each interview I was thanked profusely for bearing witness and was asked to share their stories with others; because, “forgiveness”, they told me was “the only way to heal and stop the endless cycles of killing.” I met a mother who took food to the men in prison who brutally killed her children in front of her. I met a brother who adopted the children of the family responsible for killing his siblings. I met a man who later hired the young soldier who held him at gunpoint as he was forced to dig the mass graves that held his friends, neighbors and family. I saw the miraculous capacity of humanity to forgive,, not forget, even the greatest atrocities.
So you see I believe such healing is possible. Whether you feel compelled to engage in 26 Acts of Kindness, 27, 28 or maybe you feel like you can forgive Adam, the NRA and anyone or anything you feel is causing this suffering, just know it’s all good. As we close 2012 and embark on 2013, I hope that we can be moved by grace, that we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, understand with our hearts, and together we can be healed. In the end, I believe, that is what will truly save us.
On the path,
Anna
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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