The deep tragedy of the death of Trayvon Martin is that it
could have been easily avoided. Had George Zimmerman chosen option five,
six or seven on that list, Trayvon might still be living, and Zimmerman’s life
might not now be so radically altered.
Instead, armed with a gun and Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law, Zimmerman
assumed the worst, ignored the dispatcher’s warning, pursued Martin and rather
than resolving a conflict, created one.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.” And blessed are the teachers and the parents and the
guardians who teach us strategies for resolving conflict with smarts. And hearts. Blessed are those who remind us that life is too precious
and too complex to be addressed by black-and-white, either-or, good-guy-bad-guy
thinking.
One of the teachers in my congregation is one such
peacemaker, although she would surely deny it. She would have done cartwheels this spring if even half the
kids in her class had mastered just one peacemaking behavior. It was a tough year for her: there were
days the bad behavior inside her classroom bordered on anarchy. It can’t have been a comfort either,
that the behavior outside her classroom was even worse, revealed over and over
by images of Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the brutal murder of
British soldier Lee Rigby in London.
Yet, by dint of sheer determination, she taught her small flock that
just because some people are behaving badly doesn’t mean that you have to.
Surely we can all agree, regardless of our race or
ethnicity, that security for our children is of utmost concern. Preparing for worst-case scenarios is
part of the process. But in these
times of heightened surveillance, increasing fear, and broader applications of
violent means of solving problems, we’re fostering a culture in which
worst-case scenarios may be the only scenario we permit ourselves to
imagine. Good peacemaking rests on
the ability to imagine something good.
You’ve heard the saying: “if all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like
a nail.” Too steady a diet of
negative thinking naturally morphs into paranoia. I am convinced that part of creating a safer world is
teaching one another to learn to look and hope for the best in others. To call upon our shared “better
angels,” and to learn to, well, compromise. Take turns.
Share. Change. Postpone. Avoid. Get
help. Apologize. Humor. Fight Fair.
Growing up, I had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with
adult Quakers. They didn’t need a
cutout on a refrigerator to remind them.
They had it instilled in their hearts that “there is that of God in
every person.” With that
stance as their starting point,
these good people are deeply devoted to non-violent approaches to
problem solving. The are adept at
seeing the good in others and hoping for the best in them. You’d think that would lead to overly-rosy
approaches to life, but most of the Quakers I know are very practical people who
just happen to developed a far wider range of responses to difficult and
sometimes confrontational than the average person.
Tony Campolo once said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the line
between good and evil does not separate one type of person from another: it runs right through the middle of
each human being. With that
in mind, let us pray for the Martin and Zimmerman families. And perhaps, too, for the courage
to imagine something good in the next stranger we meet in our neighborhood.
