What I Learned from the Amish

When Charles Carl Roberts entered a one room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, he sliced through a shield of seclusion and peace. One account of the events that day relayed that Roberts, holding a 9mm pistol, asked the children if they knew what it was. One of the young Amish girls asked if it was a horseshoe. Reading those words took me into a moment when a child's life teetered on the precipice of innocence.

At the time, I was reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, a gripping and difficult novel about the murder of a young American girl in the 1970s by her pedophile neighbor. The story unfolds after her death as she adjusts to heaven and watches her grief-stricken family unravel.

What is so compelling about the The Lovely Bones is that the characters and setting feel familiar to anyone raised in small town USA after 1960 and that the reactions, behavior and thoughts of the characters seem natural in the light of unspeakable tragedy and loss. In the novel, emotional walls were built, people withdraw from one another and justice was an ever-present desire. As I engaged the story and thought about families I knew who experienced similar loss I began to accept that humans sometimes fall and don't know how to recover.

As I followed the news coverage of the Nickel Mines tragedy I watched the strength of the Amish community tested. But in the midst of terrible tragedy and an invasive media onslaught, I saw a grieving community hold strong to their values and maintain a deep understanding of true forgiveness.

The evening after the shooting, the Amish neighbors gathered to share their grief. They thought not only of their own suffering but also the suffering of the Roberts family, the wife and children of Charles Carl Roberts now widowed and fatherless. The Amish community of Nickel Mines displayed a strength and compassion that I have been rare to witness in my lifetime. Rather than seeking a target for their pain and acting for revenge, the Amish community of Nickel Mines sought redemption. While reeling from their own loss they formed a caravan of horse-and-buggies to visit the widow of Charles Carl Roberts so that they could offer her support and condolences.

Continuing media coverage revealed that Charles Carl Roberts arrived at the one room school house that day filled with residual anger and that his actions that day were a kind of revenge for events long buried in his past, events from which he never healed. The pain Roberts was suffering was translated into violence and it seems the only rescue he felt possible was to transfer that pain.

The Amish acted as neighbors would when others are suffering loss. In a greater act of humanity they recognized Charles Carl Roberts for more than his last actions, they saw beyond his personal turmoil to the family who loved him. We might easily forget for a moment that the pain felt by the Amish community is as tangible as the pain felt by those of us who live a "modern" existence. Had they lashed out, sought justice and condemned the outer world that invaded their one room schoolhouse that day would anyone have denied them their anger? The Amish community of Nickel Mines, so far removed from the sensationalized violence that bombards the collective awareness of America, acted with compassion despite the violence inflicted upon them. It is a lesson for us all.