Way to Be

I love these people's attitude; what if everyone worked on forgiveness and putting hostility aside?
PHILADELPHIA - An Amish community that lost five girls in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting massacre last year has donated money to the widow of the gunman, the community said Wednesday.
The Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, which was set up to handle more than $4.3 million in donations from around the world after the shootings, said it had given an unspecified "contribution" to Marie Roberts, a mother of three.
Her husband, Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver who was not Amish, tied up and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls aged 6 to 14 in their classroom last Oct. 2, killing five of them before turning the gun on himself.
After the shootings, members of the deeply religious Amish community in Lancaster County about 60 miles west of Philadelphia, said they wanted to forgive the gunman.
In a statement released on behalf of the community, the committee said, "Many from Nickel Mines have pointed out that forgiveness is a journey, that you need help from your community of faith and from God ... to make and hold on to a decision not to become a hostage to hostility.
"It is understood that hostility destroys community," it said.
The Amish, descendants of Swiss-German settlers, eschew many aspects of modern life such as cars and telephones, and place particular importance on the principle of forgiveness.