Aftermath

This has been a hard week. I find myself going to the news websites more than I normally do just to see if there is anything new about the shootings of those dear little Amish girls in Paradise, Pennsylvania. It’s not that I want to intrude on the grief and anguish their families are going through but because there is this longing to know why? Why did this have to happen?

I talked to a friend who lives back there yesterday and she said the grief in the entire area is palpable. She didn’t know the shooter but she knows people who knew him and she said the thing that everyone says over and over is how could he do this? How could no one have known? She said that to those who live in other parts of the country it is easy to say he was a monster but to the people of that area he was one of them, he was someone who worked in their community, that they chatted with, whose children played with their children, whose wife they chatted with in the grocery store. Who could have guessed? Who could have known?

In a way, she said, this is worse than Sept. 11, 2001. The loss of life is not as great and there was no destruction of property. But as information came to light after 9/11/2001 we understood the purpose behind it, however wrong. And, most of all, the men who did it were “them” — others. People we don’t know and whose ways are different from our own. But this, this was done by one of us and for no clear reason that anyone can comprehend. He said he molested people but the people he molested don’t even remember him. What could have happened? The need to know is so powerful and raw and, ultimately hopeless. He shot himself last and now we will never know.

And then there is the response of the Amish, those deeply devout, quiet, peace-loving people that live quietly among the people of my friends area. The grandfather of one of the dead girls said, “We must not think evil of this man.” He said that God asks much of us and that sometimes things happen that are a test of Faith. He said we must pray.

That kind of faith in God just leaves me speechless and amazed. What courage to be able to say such words while aching to the bone with grief for a lost child. And what total faith in the Divine. It is the flower that blossoms through the broken glass. It is the tiny birthday cake candle that is lit in the darkest, darkest night.

I am a person of Faith even though I’m pretty bad at it at times. This past year has been a challenge for a variety of reason most of all because I truly wonder what I am doing with my life at times. But then something like this happens and I feel so devastated that something so horrible and senseless can occur. Then a man like this Amish grandfather steps forth and says “we must not think evil of this man”. I wish there was a way to say to him, in the midst of all he must be going through, what a blessing he is — what a blessing his words are. If there is any sense to be made of all this tragedy it is that these people to whom this horror was done are showing the rest of us what it means to be real Christians.

The word “Christian” gets tossed around a lot these days by the ultra-conservatives. They flaunt Christianity as an excuse to behave in the most unchristian of ways. We are a Christian country, they say, except all that stuff about feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless—forget that. It’s all about personal responsibility, Jesus left that part out on the Sermon on the Mount. It’s made me question whether I wanted to be associated with their ilk.

But an Amish grandfather in a small town outside of Paradise, Pennsylvania has reminded me of what real faith is. I amgratefulto him for that.

Thanks for reading.