I have previously written about a scene in the film “The Interpreter” where Nicole Kidman utters the words: “Vengence is a Lazy Form of Grief.”

I feel the need to resurrect this clip and the words again today.

Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can’t find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There’s an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He’s taken out on the water and he’s dropped. He’s bound so that he can’t swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they’ll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn’t always just… that very act can take away their sorrow.

When I was a teenager one of my best friends was killed in a car accident. He was hit head on by a drunk driver who survived. I date my introduction to the concept of restorative justice to that time. The grief was overwhelming. None of us who were his friends knew how to get past our anger or how to overcome the sense that we had been robbed. We were struck by the profound unfairness of a 16 year old losing his life.

My friend’s mother did something extraordinary however. She attended the trial of the drunk driver and asked to speak at his sentencing hearing. At that hearing, she asked the judge to show mercy to the man who had killed her son. She told the judge that she could not imagine how the defendant must be feeling for killing her son. She told the judge that she would miss her son forever but that she had already forgiven the defendant.

A few months later, she received a letter from the drunk driver. I never got to see the letter but she later told me that he expressed his profound grief and sorrow over what he had done. He told her a bit about his life and what had led him to drink and drive. He told her that he would do his utmost to live a life of service in the future. They continued to correspond while he was incarcerated and are currently still in touch all of these years later. I learned about compassion, forgiveness and grace from my friend’s mother and the drunk driver.

I am thinking about this episode today because I received a call from a friend last month asking if I would keep a peace circle. She explained that a young man in her neighborhood was shot non-lethally in late November. The shooter was arrested and will be tried later this year. The families of the shooting victim and of the shooter know each other. This incident has caused, as you can imagine, a great deal of anger and has elicited vows of revenge.

I spent part of this past week trying to arrange for a peace circle to take place involving some of the key family members and friends who have been impacted by this incident. Unfortunately, I encountered a great deal of resistance from all sides. Most of the people involved are currently mired in a place of rage and revenge. They expressed to me that they felt betrayed and violated. They thanked me for my willingness to keep a circle for them but told me that they “weren’t ready.” I said that I understood and assured them that I would make myself available whenever they were ready to sit in circle together.

A peace circle wasn’t going to necessarily “resolve” anything for these people. What my friend hoped to do was to lay a foundation or pave a road for the possibility of compassion and forgiveness in the future. She wanted to ensure that a space was opened for communication so as to minimize the possibility of future violence. I fear that these two families are going to embark in a vicious cycle of revenge which will leave only more victims in its wake. My prayer and deepest wish for the families is that they embrace the truth that “vengence is [in fact] a lazy form of grief” and will work to address their grief rather than focus on revenge.

There is nothing easy about these situations. They are messy and we fail. We can’t stay on the mat for too long though. Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to create more peace in the world.