Amish Grace

Sometimes in this mixed-up world of ours we tend to lose persepctive beyond ourn own lives (case in point: my "friend" and his recent performance evaluation, but more on that later).

I heard about the book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal (a great discovery by Rosanne) a few weeks ago and was stunned by the passage that Bill spoke about.

The book deals with the Amish school shooting that happened a few years ago. But more specifically it deals with the Amish community's decision to forgive the shooter.

This is incredible, especially given the conservative-fueled vitriol that permeates our lives these days. Bill points out that when the shooter was buried "more than half the mourners at the cemetery were Amish. It was, one of them said, simply the right thing to do."

But why forgive?

Again, as Bill points out: "[O]ne of the grieving fathers said, as they had released the killer, they had released themselves from anger and from bitterness. But not from pain."

Perhaps there is something in this that we can take into our own lives. The bitterness we harbor towards those that have slighted us (whether real or perceived) only ends up destroying our own selves from the inside out.

Here are Bill's final words from that episode of his show:

On the anniversary of their loss, the community once again spoke to the larger world, in a statement saying that 'forgiveness is a journey...you need help from your community of faith and from God, and sometimes even from counselors, to make and hold on to a decision to not become a hostage to hostility.'

Hostility, they said, 'destroys community.'

Links:

Bill Moyers Journal
Amish Grace Publisher Info