I’m not at all sure what to say after reading this article. In my dreams this is the way that every community would deal with any sort of terrible event. I’m speechless for two reasons, because of my incredible respect for the Amish community and how they handled this and out of sadness for the rest of us who can’t deal with problems like this. If being an atheist wasn’t a hindrance to being Amish I’d be off to join one of their communities tomorrow.
AlterNet: What the Amish Are Teaching America
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that OK? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts’ family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don’t automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
