Two stories reminded me of the importance of fighting the good fight, today. First up, we have the Amish of Nickel Mines. I’m generally rather critical of the Amish belief system, but I have to give them much credit for their actions in the wake of the loss of their daughters a year ago. Not only did they attend the funeral of the shooter, but it was recently revealed that they have even given financial assistance to the murderer’s widow.
Think about that. Not only did they show their forgiveness through their public presence at the funeral of the man who killed their children, but they followed that through with private support of the person they’d expect to be closest to the killer. Honestly, that is breathtaking.
I don’t know that I could do the same. In fact, I’m pretty sure I could not. But that does not stop me from recognizing that it’s something we’d all be better off emulating. Bitterness and hate are ugly things, and forgiveness goes a long way towards countering them. Hatred will get you nowhere, and the sooner we can excise it from ourselves, the better off we all are.  Anger, however, is not the same thing. Which brings me to the second story.
Brandon Mayfield. You may recall him as the lawyer who was wrongly accused of masterminding the Madrid train bombings. He, too, found a way to forgive the FBI for ruining his life by fingering him as a terrorist (tho’ I’m sure the $2m settlement made that a bit easier than one might otherwise expect). He dropped all personal claims against the FBI, but retained one very important claim – “that two provisions of the Patriot Act were unconstitutional on their face.” Mayfield is moving on with his life while vigorously pursuing an action against the sneak-and-peek and related sharing provisions of the Patriot Act. His is a rare position – he has solid standing (the basis on which many claims against the Patriot Act have been thrown out) to challenge these Constitution-circumventing provisions. Mayfield puts it this way:
“We have a perfect balance between liberty and security, between criminal investigation and privacy. It’s called probable cause,” he said. “We ironed out these issues a long time ago. That’s why we’re such a wonderful country.”
Indeed. Would that we all could put aside our bitterness and hatred while continuing to fight the good fights.