Let the Amish Wage Our War on Terror
After a month of "Coming to the Middle" to find our common values,
and after a month of training in methods of NonViolence,
I am more fully confident that war is the least creative option possible.
When the Amish Christians of Lancaster, PA experienced their own "9/11" last week,
they showed us an alternative means of dealing with the "suicide-bomber/hijacker/child molesting/crazed killer."
They took up an offering for his surviving family!
Only a people steeped in the practices of nonviolence for a lifetime or two could possibly have responded that imaginatively. Compassionately. Counter-intuitively.
We need not move to Pennsylvania to learn the ways that make for peace.
There's plenty of opportunity to practice here.
Shalom.
Here's how a Detroit columnist narrates the "hard work of healing" happening there.
Metro Detroit
BRIAN DICKERSON:
The power of example: Lessons of 'Amish 9/11'
October 9, 2006
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Am I the only one who thinks the United States would be safer if the Amish were in charge of the war on terror?
A week has passed since the schoolhouse slaughter in Lancaster County, and while the rest of us continue to shake our heads in horror, the Amish are already bent to the hard work of healing.
The massacre shattered the serenity of southeast Pennsylvania's Amish country. An Amish bishop called it "our 9/11," which captures both the shootings' seismic impact and the degree to which the Amish consider themselves a nation apart.
Now the bodies of five little girls and the madman who killed them are in the ground. But if you are like me, what astonishes you the most isn't what a 32-year-old madman did, but how the community whose children he slaughtered has responded.
Charles Roberts IV, who killed himself after shooting 10 helpless schoolgirls, wasn't Amish himself. But his milk delivery route included the farms of many Amish families, including that of 13-year-old Marian Fisher, one of those killed in Roberts' rampage.
So when the Fisher family made plans for Marian's funeral, they naturally invited her killer's widow and children. It wasn't an impulsive invitation, issued in a moment of vengeful anger -- Come see what that monster did! -- but a reflexive recognition that Roberts' survivors, too, were part of a community in need of healing.
Two days later, when the shooter's body was laid to rest, the mourners included dozens of Amish.
There were other examples of continuity and grace: The Amish community's determination that a fund set up to pay for its own children's funeral and medical expenses would be shared with the shooter's survivors; the delegations, official and informal, that bore messages of forgiveness and condolence to the Roberts' doorstep; the decision that funeral processions for the dead girls would pass by the Roberts' house, not be rerouted around it.
To an outside world that understands recrimination better than redemption, it was a dumbfounding spectacle.
Thirty years ago, when I was attending college in New Jersey, I used to pass through Lancaster County several times each year on my way to my parents' home in western New York. Like most visitors to Amish Country, I marveled at its residents' stubborn resistance to modernity. I also remember thinking, not without sadness, that the secular culture would inevitably overwhelm their way of life.
Now I'm not so sure. And this past weekend, as Amish farming families resumed their harvest routines, I found myself thinking about Dr. Seuss' curmudgeonly Grinch.
You remember the story: The Grinch, who detested Christmas and all it stood for, vowed to stop the holiday once and for all. One Christmas Eve, he and his dog Max descended into the peaceful hamlet of Who-ville for an orgy of pillaging. Then, after relieving the despised Whos of all their worldly goods, the Grinch paused on a nearby hilltop to savor the waking Whos' wails of devastation.
What he heard, you may recall, was singing.
Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-351-3697 or dicker@freepress.com.
and after a month of training in methods of NonViolence,
I am more fully confident that war is the least creative option possible.
When the Amish Christians of Lancaster, PA experienced their own "9/11" last week,
they showed us an alternative means of dealing with the "suicide-bomber/hijacker/child molesting/crazed killer."
They took up an offering for his surviving family!
Only a people steeped in the practices of nonviolence for a lifetime or two could possibly have responded that imaginatively. Compassionately. Counter-intuitively.
We need not move to Pennsylvania to learn the ways that make for peace.
There's plenty of opportunity to practice here.
Shalom.
Here's how a Detroit columnist narrates the "hard work of healing" happening there.
Metro Detroit
BRIAN DICKERSON:
The power of example: Lessons of 'Amish 9/11'
October 9, 2006
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Am I the only one who thinks the United States would be safer if the Amish were in charge of the war on terror?
A week has passed since the schoolhouse slaughter in Lancaster County, and while the rest of us continue to shake our heads in horror, the Amish are already bent to the hard work of healing.
The massacre shattered the serenity of southeast Pennsylvania's Amish country. An Amish bishop called it "our 9/11," which captures both the shootings' seismic impact and the degree to which the Amish consider themselves a nation apart.
Now the bodies of five little girls and the madman who killed them are in the ground. But if you are like me, what astonishes you the most isn't what a 32-year-old madman did, but how the community whose children he slaughtered has responded.
Charles Roberts IV, who killed himself after shooting 10 helpless schoolgirls, wasn't Amish himself. But his milk delivery route included the farms of many Amish families, including that of 13-year-old Marian Fisher, one of those killed in Roberts' rampage.
So when the Fisher family made plans for Marian's funeral, they naturally invited her killer's widow and children. It wasn't an impulsive invitation, issued in a moment of vengeful anger -- Come see what that monster did! -- but a reflexive recognition that Roberts' survivors, too, were part of a community in need of healing.
Two days later, when the shooter's body was laid to rest, the mourners included dozens of Amish.
There were other examples of continuity and grace: The Amish community's determination that a fund set up to pay for its own children's funeral and medical expenses would be shared with the shooter's survivors; the delegations, official and informal, that bore messages of forgiveness and condolence to the Roberts' doorstep; the decision that funeral processions for the dead girls would pass by the Roberts' house, not be rerouted around it.
To an outside world that understands recrimination better than redemption, it was a dumbfounding spectacle.
Thirty years ago, when I was attending college in New Jersey, I used to pass through Lancaster County several times each year on my way to my parents' home in western New York. Like most visitors to Amish Country, I marveled at its residents' stubborn resistance to modernity. I also remember thinking, not without sadness, that the secular culture would inevitably overwhelm their way of life.
Now I'm not so sure. And this past weekend, as Amish farming families resumed their harvest routines, I found myself thinking about Dr. Seuss' curmudgeonly Grinch.
You remember the story: The Grinch, who detested Christmas and all it stood for, vowed to stop the holiday once and for all. One Christmas Eve, he and his dog Max descended into the peaceful hamlet of Who-ville for an orgy of pillaging. Then, after relieving the despised Whos of all their worldly goods, the Grinch paused on a nearby hilltop to savor the waking Whos' wails of devastation.
What he heard, you may recall, was singing.
Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-351-3697 or dicker@freepress.com.
posted by YellArose | 1:27 AM
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