littlek wrote:A tear-jerker of an article at the Atlanta-Journal Constitution ties, in a way, Ubuntu to the Amish community's reaction to the school house shootings. Gilbert Tuhabonye survived a schoolhouse massacre in Burundi in 1993 and published his own book about the ordeal, including the forgiveness he came to.
AJC
Quote:Breaking a cycle
Tuhabonye knows about those miracles. He was the lone survivor that day in 1993 after the mob attacked his high school. He wielded the charred bone from a classmate's body to break a window and flee from a fire the mob had set when they trapped him and others in his school.
Tuhabonye says he was walking the streets of Burundi later when the man who commanded the mob saw him. The leader ran and collapsed at Tuhabonye's feet, begging for his life.
"Please forgive me," the mob leader said. "I didn't know what I was doing. The government made me do it."
The words made Tuhabonye's heart race. He pointed the gun in the man's face and vowed to kill him. But he didn't pull the trigger.
"I told him, 'Get out of here. Run!' " he recalled.
Tuhabonye says he didn't fire because it would have created an "unending cycle."
"I chose forgiveness," he said. "I wanted a better world."
That really impresses me. It's not just that Tuhabonye decided to forgive the man, but that he
understood that another killing would serve no other purpose than to continue the cycle of violence. Maybe there's some dim hope for the human race yet.
