Nine year old Bess Lyn Sannino was angry to find her house had
been burglarized. Seventeen dollars in allowance money, her Valentine's Day
candy, and a tape player were gone. The front door had been pelted with raw
eggs. She felt sure the burglars were several young teenagers from her
neighborhood who'd earlier sprayed graffiti on the garage.
Her mother, a
Quaker, had doubts about calling the police. She called the father of one of the
young suspects, who encouraged her to work with police to help this become a
lesson for the teens.
A compassionate police officer took a week to locate
the parents of all four suspects. One mother worked two jobs and wasn't home
until after 11 pm. A father had been hospitalized for erratic, potentially
violent behavior. These were stressed, troubled families.
In the
conversations that followed, all the parents and the police officer agreed that
no permanent record of the incident would be kept if the offenders would make up
for their crime in more meaningful ways. In addition to curfews and other
restrictions, creative forms of restitution were agreed to. One of the
perpetrators wrote an essay on integrity and came to the house to read it to
Bess. Others came and cleaned off the front door, did yard work and chores
around the house. Everything that was taken was returned.
But Bess found
she needed healing on a deeper level. With her mother's support, Bess hosted a
Forgiveness Party for the young people who'd broken into her house. She made a
piņata and decorated her house and yard. There was lots of music coming from the
formerly stolen tape player. Not only did the young people come, so did their
parents and siblings. It became quite a celebration. Anger and shame were
transformed into joy and community. Healing happened for everyone.
Bess
related this story in a very matter-of-fact tone. To her, it seemed like the
most ordinary thing, to throw a party for people who came uninvited into her
home to vandalize and steal from her. She was surprised that so many adults were
impressed by her idea.
Adapted from "Nonviolence in the Arena: The Forgiveness Party" by Jo Clare Hartsig and Walter Wink, in Fellowship, July/August 1995, p. 31.
COMMENTARY: The destructive initiative of the teen burglars is
met with a remarkable amount of collaboration and creative initiative, rather
than state force. As co-intelligent as that is, however, this story is
particularly interesting in that it moves even beyond that, into a level of wholeness,
interconnectedness and co-creativity we seldom see. But most of us aren't
quite like Bess. Luckily, we can use more mundane, but still effective,
co-intelligent approaches like mediation and principled negotiation.
Resource: If you are interested in more on forgiveness, check out the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance http://www.forgivenessday.org/