Thursday, August 6, 2015

Are we too quick to forgive, forget and move on?



Aug. 9
By S. Derrickson Moore
There is no Switzerland, no refuge from haters.
In a summer of horrible, senseless mass shootings, it’s difficult to gain perspective. By now, most of us know a victim of a mass shooting, or live near someplace where at least one such incident has occurred, in a quiet university community, at a movie theater, at a military gathering place far from any active combat zone, at a bowling alley, a shopping mall, a family home...
Or even a place of worship. On Aug. 2, when two Las Cruces churches were rocked by explosives, mercifully without any physical injuries, many of us wondered if there is any refuge or sanctuary, anywhere in this heavily armed world, too often gone mad.
Beyond several of the news cycles we lifelong journalists take as shake-it-off, survival strategy cues, I find myself still grieving for nine extraordinary people I’ve  never met who were killed in June at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.: the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Depayne Middleton Doctor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson.
I find myself going back to their pictures and biographies. These were people of deep, extraordinary faith and accomplishments, good people who might have changed the world in profound ways, who, indeed, have already done so in death.
We know they were extraordinary by the reactions of their loved ones, so clearly bereft, grieving, suffering, but walking the Christian walk and calling for forgiveness in their pain and sorrow.
We know because their mourners included a nation and its president, and a decisive call, finally, for something that should have happened a long time ago. For the end of the state-sanctioned display of a flag that symbolizes racism, slavery, hatred, Jim Crow laws. subjugation and American apartheid. A disgraced and defeated flag that had its resurgence in the shameful anti-segregationist violence of the 1950s and 60s. And a flag that became. for some, a symbol of fun in popular car chase movies, on mass merchandizing.
Imagine, a friend once said, if Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and their kids and great-grandchildren for generations, were expected to be good sports about living in land where one’s fellow citizens think it’s great fun to display Nazi swastikas on shoes, T-shirts, their babies’ onesies, coolers, backpacks and flags flying on their town squares and pickup trucks.
Why did it take us so long, and the death of nine extraordinary people, to finally acknowledge such an obvious truth?
I look at the lives of those people, who ranged in age from 26 to 87, and think what might have been. And the flags seem way too little, way too late.
I’ve been thinking about long-ago conversations with Tenny Hale, one of the most profound Christian ethicists of our time, about the nature of forgiveness. To demonstrate true repentance, Hale said, you must say you are sorry, ask for forgiveness, and pledge and dedicate yourself to making amends, to righting the wrongs, to healing the wounds, to atoning for our sins.
As far as I know, the Charleston shooter has done none of these things.
I’d like to stress that I have admiration for the strength, faith and compassion of those who expressed forgiveness to the unrepentant, hate-obsessed soul who took the earthly presence, if not the soulful inspiration, of their loved ones from them.
There is comfort, love and surprising power in forgiveness.
But I wonder if we should forgive so easily, not just the hate-filled persons who pull triggers, but the demons in society, and ourselves, that enable such unspeakable, heinous, tragic actions and attitudes.
I’m glad the flags are coming down from the municipal plazas, from the merchandise on superstore shelves. I hope I’ll quit seeing those hateful images on license plates and decals in the borderland.
In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “Between the World and Me,” helped me understand why so many of us are still trying to get a handle on this fiercely tenacious grief that has extended beyond so many news cycles and the guilt-driven, belated, removal of a symbol of hatred.
Maybe we shouldn’t try to speed the grieving process.
“We should not feel comfortable with that,” Coates said. ”We should sit with that.”
S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news, @derricksonmoore on Twitter and Tout, or call 575-541-5450.

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