God bless America

This week, as part of our remembrance of the 9/11 attacks, our community was privileged to have Linda Biehl in our midst to promote dialogue on the subjects of forgiveness and reconciliation. Linda is the mother of Amy Biehl, a young American Fulbright scholar, whose was murdered in 1993 in South Africa by a mob of black militants in the township of Gugulatu. She told an inspiring story of growing to understand her daughter and her love for South Africa and its people She also spoke of growing to understand and forgive her killers through participation in the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under the leadership of Bishop Desmond Tutu. The TRC was created after the demise of apartheid in South Africa to allow South Africans to deal with the atrocities that occurred on both sides and to promote amnesty and reconciliation for politically motivated crimes. This story touched almost everyone who heard her. The Biehls lived through the legalities of trying and convicting the perpetrators of their daughter’s murder and, 5 years later, of pleading for amnesty for them. In the process they developed a relationship of understanding, forgiveness and reconciliation with the killers of Amy. Two of the young men now work for the Amy Biehl Foundation. which endeavors to continue the work in South Africa that was so important to Amy. (If you are interested in more information on what they are trying to do click here.) Not everyone in the audience understood what the Bielhls were able to do. They said “How can you forgive that terrible crime?”; “Aren’t you condoning what they did?”. Linda’s response was “You can’t do anything about the past-you can only change the future” and “Amy showed us that individuals with a passion can make a difference and we are trying to honor her memory by continuing her work of helping those who are so oppressed and frustrated that they do things that they would not otherwise do”. This message of forgiveness and reconciliation is an important one to hear at a time when our media is filled with politicians exhorting us to hate the “Islamic fascists” and to condone the mistreatment of enemies who were “masterminds of 9/11”. As I recall there was some crazy Jew who was walking around the Middle East 2000 years ago saying nutty things like “love your neighbor” and “love your enemy”. He wasn’t saying things like God bless America, God bless Israel or God bless Iran. Instead he was saying things like God bless the meek and God bless the poor of spirit. Come to think of it, that got Him killed too.