One year ago, some people came to a little country cemetery to mourn one among them. Nothing strange or newsworthy about that, except that the man they came to pay final respects to had murdered five of their town's children, before turning the gun on himself.
Then, in perhaps an equally astonishing act of wisdom, they tore down the little schoolhouse where it all happened, and returned the site to the earth, an open piece of countryside. If you've forgotten it, you can refresh your memory here.
It is very easy to say that the Amish are not like us; that we can't possibly be like them--as strong, as humble, as psychologically or spiritually enlightened. But I suspect that would be selling the Amish, and ourselves, short. The question is not whether we can be like them--that would be a futile effort of slavish imitation. The proper question, I think, is whether we can learn from them. If your answer to that is "No," then I say, "OK, Mr. Vice President, go back to your underground bunker and move your toy airplanes over the map of Iran."
But the rest of us may benefit from studying these wise and gentle people, how they reacted to a cataclysm of, for them, 9/11 proportions. However, if our study is merely intellectual, then it will bring us nothing. True learning begins in the heart, and from that center, awakens and inspires mind. It was Einstein who reminded us, "Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison [of thought] by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
So let us not take the lesson of the Amish literally or superficially. And anyway, we cannot bury Osama, for he is only dead within: his heart is black with decay, but the rest of him remains, so far as we know, alive. But we could do what I suggested last year, at the site of our own devastation. We could return it to the Earth, rather than building a corporate monument to heaven. We can also reveal the same spirit as the Amish in doing one simple thing: close Gitmo.
One thing must be considered certain by now: our response to a murderous assault--the response of war, violence, hatred, and murder--has failed. It is time to consider another strategy, one guided not by an isolated intellect or a closed fist, but by the heart of natural wisdom. Compassion and justice are, like life and death, not opposed--not even separate. They are two clouds in one sky; two stars in a single constellation. This principle seems to guide, even define, the lives of the Amish people; it would not hurt us to turn within and discover it in ourselves, and then act accordingly, wherever that heart-teaching leads us.