Unspeakable violence, oddly enough, has been responsible for most Americans learning much more about two religions they had no reason to routinely encounter in their largely mainstream, Christian surroundings.
The first was Islam, the religion of 1.4 billion Muslims, only 20 percent of which are Arabs. The 9/11 kamikaze attacks by doomed aircraft in the hands of radical Muslims focused the nation and the world on Islam and its most violent extremists.
Then, in a deranged murder-suicide, a gunman executed and wounded 10 young girls in a one-room rural Pennsylvania schoolhouse little more than a week ago. Americans suddenly learned the deeper meanings of the Amish people, breakaway Mennonites known mostly for their rejection of modern ways and their quaint horse-and-buggy transportation.
What the nation has learned since that ghastly day in Lancaster County should be a model in many ways for all humankind, and especially for those whose instincts are to punch back or wage war to avenge insults or violence.
Despite indescribably searing sorrow, Amish families spoke eloquently of forgiveness for the non-Amish killer of their children, himself a father of three.
Perhaps most astonishing outside the Amish world, Amish families began a charity to help the widow and children of the gunman, invited the gunman's widow to funerals of the slain children and then attended the burial of the killer in a show of benevolence and shared grief.
Although small in number (about 200,000 Amish in 27 states, mostly Pennsylvania), the Amish descendants of 18th century Swiss and German immigrants thrive in their agricultural enterprises and maintain a strong devotion to faith and families with their unshakable belief that forgiveness and non-violence are the salvation of humankind.
How stark are these portraits: parents of murdered children forgiving the killer and embracing his family at the very time world leaders talk of war and even refuse to speak to declared enemies in Syria, North Korea, Chechnya, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and assorted mini-states.
Until the schoolhouse slaughter by the crazed gunman, the Amish community had no reason to fear for its safety or to arm citizens or erect safeguards so visibly common in the modern, if not totally civilized, world.
Societies armed with super military weaponry, and citizens packing firearms in the belief they're more secure, should ask whether they feel safer in body and mind than the Amish, who deal with violence by forgiving and lending a helping hand.
