John initially showed me this post because the photo of double-amputee Gill Hicks caught his eye. That she has forgiven the London bombers whose acts resulted in her loss is a miracle.Today I showed my students a video about the 1992 LA Uprising/Rodney King Riots. The movie, Sa-I-Gu, explores the tensions in central L.A. between African-Americans and the Korean shopkeepers whose businesses were looted and burned to the ground. Though there are interviewees in this documentary that speak kindly about their neighbors, I left class today with an overwhelming weariness. Feeling as if the world is way too complex. With a loss of hope that was exacerbated by a conversation with a student in the Navy following the film.
But I think I will prepare for Rosh Hashanah this year as God Girl has suggested, by finding hope through forgiveness. She quotes Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald as saying:
"We have this concept that God is in the fields....He's not in his temple, he's not in his abodes . . . he's not transcendent. He's very, very imminent. He comes out to the fields, to the people in the fields, begging them, 'OK, come to me and just ask for forgiveness.'
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