Forgiveness Requires Imagination

And remembering Sister Ardeth Platte, OP

In 2006, a man named Charles Carl Roberts entered an Amish school house in Nickel Pines, PA with a gun. He shot 10 young girls; six of them died. He forced the young boys to help him in the process. In the end, Roberts killed himself.

The atrocity is truly unimaginable. Though, of course, we know that events like this have only multiplied since 2006.

Just as unimaginable, if not more so, is how the Amish responded. According to reports, within hours of the shooting, the Amish were comforting the killer’s family and offering forgiveness. Apparently, one Amish man held Roberts’ father in his arms for an hour as he sobbed. They established a fund for the killer’s family and donated some donkeys to the widow. 30 Amish attended the killer’s funeral.

Tania Runyan writes about this in her poem “Blessed are the Merciful.” Just based on the small information I shared above, we all might be able to identify with her first line.

Blessed Are The Merciful

I didn’t trust their forgiveness.

Before the blood cooled on the schoolhouse floor
they held the killer’s widow in their arms,

raised money for his children,
lined his grave site with a row of patient horses.

Somewhere in town there had to be a father
splitting a trunk and imagining the crush

of the murderer’s skull. There had to be a mother
hurling a Bible at the wall that received her prayers.

Or is it just the flash and noise of my own life
that primes me for anger? Does scrolling

through playlists in traffic fill the spaces
in my mind reserved for grace?

Forgiveness requires imagination.
Eye for an eye is efficient.

For the man brought chains.
He brought wires, eyehooks and boards.

He brought a bag of candles and lubricant
and secured little girls with plastic ties.

Two sisters begged to be shot first
to spare the others.

He shot them first. Then the rest.
One child with twenty-four bullets.

Perhaps they know something I don’t,
something to do with the morning rising

over an open field. The fathers receive
the meadowlark, the swallowtail,

the good corn rising into the fog.
The mothers ride their carriages into town,

accepting the rumbles of the stony road,
tripping into the rough hands of God.

The morning, having risen, over an open field. Oglala, SD

Forgiveness requires imagination. It requires a totally new way of seeing the world, especially if it is to become instinctual, like it was for the Amish, and like Jesus asks of us. Imagination, as we know, is not imaginary, but it does entail a new way of seeing and thinking, one that is different from the norm.

I encountered this poem for the first time a number of weeks ago, during the awful occupation of Minnesota by ICE and their terrorizing of migrants. Reading it was disorientating then, as it is now, recalling that a Christian is called to both resist the violence and injustice, while also view the enemy and perpetrator as a neighbor, and be willing to offer forgiveness. How?

The poem came to mind again as I watched clips from Kristi Noem testifying before Congress.

I remembered it as I read this recent article from Sister Tracey Horan writing from the border, “Opposing ICE actions against migrants–without dehumanizing ICE agents.”

Forgiveness might be the hardest of Jesus’s teachings. I don’t know. It requires imagination, the poet says. What is that imagination?

In the Kingdom of God, we get all sorts of reversals. Being first is being last. Being rich is more precarious than being poor. Losing is winning. Dying is rising. Mourning is blessed. God is human. We are supposed to trust all of this.

Each day, the Church celebrates the Eucharist, which is the example par excellence of this new imagination. It is the highest prayer of the Church because it embodies, remembers, ritualizes what the rest of our day can be, which is a new imagination. In the normal way of seeing the world, the bird eats the worm. But in the Eucharist, the worm eats the bird. Can we imagine that?

In this imagination, forgiveness becomes less about individuals and certain acts, but part of a whole new approach to reality. It may not make sense or seem just. It may seem foolish, like Jesus did.

This imagination springs from, or it springs, a reality in which the worm eats the bird, where God’s loving mercy is showered equally and abundantly on everyone, where God is a man, and is bread, too.

In the world riddled with escalating violence that we are living in, I don’t know what this new imagination asks of us. I know it is what is demanded of us by Jesus and that it is a struggle.

It is instructive that Runyan offers where this new imagination might get formed, at least in the Amish:

Perhaps they know something I don’t,
something to do with the morning rising

over an open field. The fathers receive
the meadowlark, the swallowtail,

the good corn rising into the fog.

Wonder at the simplicity of nature, attention to its fecundity, generosity, steadfastness. This all might help us. So do models and witnesses, like the Amish.

One of my favorite things I’ve been able to write was an obituary for a woman named Sister Ardeth Platte. She was a famous anti-nuclear peace activist and a truly remarkable woman. She spent a number of years in prison for her activism, she was featured as a character in the Netflix show Orange is the New Black, she was honored with many awards, including her connection to the Nobel Peace Prize with the group International Coalition on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

But as I interviewed people about her death, many noted that what was most astonishing was her spiritual discipline to not make an enemy out of anyone. A woman up against the powers of death refusing to make an enemy out of anyone. I’m remembering her today in the middle of National Catholic Sisters Week and as I recall this poem, and the readings today on forgiveness and mercy.

Me with Sister Carol Gilbert, OP (center) and Sister Ardeth Platte, OP (right) before a protest agains inhumane treatment of migrants in 2020.

In a short Lenten penance service in my Jesuit community last night, our superior preached to us about the importance of gratitude. Our founder, St. Ignatius famously noted that ingratitude is the root of all sin. The more grateful we are, the more natural this all comes to us.

I am going to try this week to notice the morning rising and to remember the witnesses of mercy and beg to be grateful for all it.