An Amish Traffic Jam?

The incongruity of this Pennsylvania  Dutch traffic “pretzel” is certainly amusing.

Yet  it is also unintentionally iconoclastic, as it attacks Amish Grace, that laudable instinct of these deliberately simple people who have shown an enormous capacity for forgiveness.

The Amish demonstration of how forgiveness can transcend tragedy was strikingly evident in the Amish community’s reaction to the schoolhouse shooting in 2006 where five little girls were shot execution style and others critically wounded before the gunman turned the rifle on himself.  Fresh from burying their own children, the Amish  made up half of the 75 attendees at the SHOOTER’s funeral. They were present to give solace to the deranged gunman’s family as they too were victims of the tragedy. That outreach was only part of the story as the shooter’s mother cultivated relations with the injured victims’ families.  Most religions teach forgiveness but few put it into practice like the Amish.

So for all those who do not cherish a community that celebrates forgiveness and lives it even when it hurts–“Place that up thy butter churn!” ;-)