by Doe West
 [Note from Kathie: this is post 3 in a four part series by Dr. Doe West, award-winning psychologist and pastor.
THIS I CAN PROVE:
Trees actually begin to show their true colors in autumn.
Here’s why: The four primary pigments that produce color within a leaf are chlorophyll (green), xanthophylls (yellow), carotenoids (orange), and anthocyanins (reds and purples). During the warmer growing seasons, leaves produce chlorophyll to help plants create energy from light. The green pigment becomes dominant and masks the other pigments. As days get shorter and nights become longer, trees prepare for winter and the next growing season by blocking off flow to and from a leaf’s stem. This process stops green chlorophyll from being replenished and causes the leaf’s green color to fade. The fading green allows a leaf’s true colors to emerge, producing the dazzling array of orange, yellow, red, and purple call fall foliage before the stem finally detaches. Leaves fall, and their true colors are revealed.
We may never know the true colors of the Las Vegas shooter — why he did it, what forces internal or external drove him. We see only the dominant color of his behavior that one dark night. I lovingly offer that we need to shift focus from his behavior to our own behavior in response. One clear view I have about the fraught issue of forgiveness comes from another atrocity, another October massacre. On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community in Pennsylvania. A gunman took the children in that school hostage and then shot eight of the 10 little girls (ages six to 13), killing five of them before taking his own life.
The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community brought me to my emotional knees. Each time I find myself in this same spot, driven by anguish or anger or awe, I remember this:
On the day of the shooting, the grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Another Amish father noted, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul, and now he’s standing before a just God.”
Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained, “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.”
Amish community members visited and comforted the gunman’s widow, his parents, and his parents-in-law. One Amish man held his sobbing father in his arms, to comfort him. About 30 members of the Amish community attended the man’s funeral, and the widow of the killer was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of a victim.
The widow wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors, thanking them for their forgiveness, grace, and mercy. She wrote, “Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.”
