16 Dec 2012 Comments Off on Even, and especially, with the Sandy Hook tragedy, practice forgiveness
Even, and especially, with the Sandy Hook tragedy, practice forgiveness
Many people, including President Obama, are weeping, feeling the unspeakable ache of the immensity of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut reverberating through our hearts.
As Course students, what do we do when confronted by human tragedy? We feel all the powerful, devastating feelings course through us. We grieve and we join, we unite and we undo. We love and we hug. We step back and let Him lead the way. We practice forgiveness.
Consider the extraordinary example of the Amish community who dealt with a very similar incident in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 2006, when a gunman shot school children, ages 6 – 13, and then killed himself in their school. Forgiveness and reconciliation was the response of the Amish community–watch the movie Amish Grace, based on the book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher.
ACIM teaches us, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” (T-16.IV.6). When we are willing to seek and find these barriers to love, this opens us to feel at our core the peace of God in any and all circumstances (even as the personality struggles). In so doing, we become the light at the end of the tunnel for others who cannot feel peace.
The Workbook teaches us how to accept guidance from the Holy Spirit and give all our barriers to Him. This purifies us and opens us as a conduit for God’s Loving Light. Transferring this Loving Light is what we can “do” when faced with something like the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown two days ago.
There is a Sufi expression, “An open heart is its own best protection.” ACIM teaches the same thing in Lessons 135 , “If I defend myself I am attacked” and 153, “In my defenselessness my safety lies.” Opening ourselves to the Beingness of God’s Loving Light makes us aware that there is an unshakable peace within us, even as the personality and the body rumbles with shock, despair and rage. Let it rumble and choose to change your mind, where all questions are always answered with Love.
Let us pray:
Holy Spirit, help us ease the pain of all who suffer by recognizing What We Already Are even as they do not. Help us see through your vision the Christ in every brother, without exception, and know that acts of violence are cries for help, that belief in death and the body is a mistake, and that we can know the Peace of God in this holy instant. Amen.
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