It is an enduring mystery of life how the moral range of humanity can stretch from a twisted young racist such as Dylann Roof, who faces charges of slaughtering six women and three men during a Bible-study class, to a woman such as Nadine Collier, who is the daughter of one of the victims, Ethel Lance, and who was able to find it in her heart to turn to Roof at his bond hearing and say, “I forgive you.”
How many of us are capable of that? Imagine the capacity for grace in Felicia Sanders, who lost her son, Tywanza, in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church massacre, and who said to the alleged killer at the hearing, “Every fibre in my body hurts, and I will never be the same. But as we say in Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you.” We enjoyed you. This is a superhuman form of endurance and pity. The world is such a fallen place that it is somehow easier to comprehend the deranged cruelty of Dylann Roof than the unfathomable and uncompromising mercy of Nadine Collier and Felicia Sanders.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/mercy-and-a-manifesto-in-charleston
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