Requiem to the Amish
If anyone’s faith in humanity was on the wane last week, namely in light of the murder of several Amish children in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, they needed look no further than that very Amish community for a heartrending tale of the kind of boundless charity we tend to call rare or nonexistent in our modern world.
Five, and possibly six, precious lives were lost after a deranged man transposed his misery on a rural schoolhouse on Monday. A few short and agonizing days later, newspaper reports showed the Amish community setting aside personal anguish – as they are routinely inclined to do – and reaching out to the family of the killer. Rightly, they deemed his wife and children as additional victims in the aftermath of the heinous crime.
As people from around the world mourned from afar and pledged money to help the families of the deceased and the Amish community as a whole, Amish leaders in turn set up a fund for the killer’s widow and her kids.
What’s more, the wife of murderer Charles Roberts, Marie, was invited to attend the funeral of at least one of the young girls, by the family of that girl. It’s not known whether she attended, but that’s rather irrelevant.
What is relevant is what we can all, as a society, learn from the Amish in their weakest moments. From their simple, unspoiled and work hard ways has come profound and life-affirming empathy and warm-heartedness.
I come from Mennonite ancestry and would like to believe that I am capable of such acts of utter selflessness. However, until I find myself in the same dire predicament – and hopefully I never will – I understand that I will not truly know the impact of their benevolence.
God bless these lovely people and I hope they will find at least a small bit of solace in the fact that millions of people the world over share in their pain and have shed a tear over the death of their young ones. May they somehow find the strength to celebrate the lives that were lost and retain their faith that there is much good in the world.
Given their loving actions in the most difficult of days, with the unwanted media attention forced upon them and hovering over their every move and expression, I doubt these people need my smidgen of support. But they have it anyway.
May they continue to show us their better world, even if we aren’t inclined to pay attention.
Five, and possibly six, precious lives were lost after a deranged man transposed his misery on a rural schoolhouse on Monday. A few short and agonizing days later, newspaper reports showed the Amish community setting aside personal anguish – as they are routinely inclined to do – and reaching out to the family of the killer. Rightly, they deemed his wife and children as additional victims in the aftermath of the heinous crime.
As people from around the world mourned from afar and pledged money to help the families of the deceased and the Amish community as a whole, Amish leaders in turn set up a fund for the killer’s widow and her kids.
What’s more, the wife of murderer Charles Roberts, Marie, was invited to attend the funeral of at least one of the young girls, by the family of that girl. It’s not known whether she attended, but that’s rather irrelevant.
What is relevant is what we can all, as a society, learn from the Amish in their weakest moments. From their simple, unspoiled and work hard ways has come profound and life-affirming empathy and warm-heartedness.
I come from Mennonite ancestry and would like to believe that I am capable of such acts of utter selflessness. However, until I find myself in the same dire predicament – and hopefully I never will – I understand that I will not truly know the impact of their benevolence.
God bless these lovely people and I hope they will find at least a small bit of solace in the fact that millions of people the world over share in their pain and have shed a tear over the death of their young ones. May they somehow find the strength to celebrate the lives that were lost and retain their faith that there is much good in the world.
Given their loving actions in the most difficult of days, with the unwanted media attention forced upon them and hovering over their every move and expression, I doubt these people need my smidgen of support. But they have it anyway.
May they continue to show us their better world, even if we aren’t inclined to pay attention.
posted by Erich Schmidt | 11:32 AM
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