The silence of the storm dominated everything. There are no words to describe a quiet so potent. I knew the snow was echoing a stillness that exists, hidden, in everything. I saw that this stillness generates all life. And sitting there in the snow, I wept at the profound sound and power of that silence.
I began to see the falling flakes as yellow bursts of energy, as light and as I looked at the light I saw that its total composition was Love. That night I suspended many cherished beliefs. The snow was alive.
A few old trees remain standing in the pasture that had been the schoolyard. In addition, five young evergreens now grow along a nearby fence row... They rise heavenward, quietly pointing to the Divine Grace that somehow enabled the community to forgive within hours of the violence.
~ Donald B Kraybill in "Amish Memorials:The Nickel Mines Pasture and Quiet Forgiveness" HUFFPOST, 2011
