The soul is long-spirited. I am unsure - and unabashedly content to be so - of what depths of depravity would actually break the human spirit. Yet, I know such breakings exist.
Watching the morning news today, I listened to the jury's comments in the Petit trial after rendering their verdict yesterday, to their...well, I don't know what to call it other than devotion...to sole survivor, husband, and father William Petit.
This case captured my attention immediately because of its worst-case scenario component: in the dark of the night, when they were least guarded and most vulnerable, men stormed the Petit's home, imprisoned them, assaulted them, and ultimately murdered them - save one. The details of the mother and the daughters' (ages 17 and 11) plights are particularly gruesome, and I don't wish to repeat them. But they suffered in front of William, a ploy meant to enrage and permanently scar him.
Yet, he survives still.
He is upright. And walking. And talking. And he sat in that courtroom with his mother and his in-laws for every day of that trial, looking at these perpetrators of evil upon his three most precious gifts.
What devotion would that take?
Enough that an entire jury claims they found their strength - to look at graphic autopsy photos, to listen in eerie detail to such heinous crimes - and still follow the letter of the law.
I don't know what deep forces would cause my own river of life and spirit to run dry - nor do I ever wish it to be tested. Some journeys are simply best left not taken. But, watching this man, I can't help but agree with these jurors: to forge ahead, refusing slavery to hate and revenge in favor of faith, hope, and justice seems the harder way to go.
The better way to go.
And I sincerely pray for peace.
Peace for them all.
Watching the morning news today, I listened to the jury's comments in the Petit trial after rendering their verdict yesterday, to their...well, I don't know what to call it other than devotion...to sole survivor, husband, and father William Petit.
This case captured my attention immediately because of its worst-case scenario component: in the dark of the night, when they were least guarded and most vulnerable, men stormed the Petit's home, imprisoned them, assaulted them, and ultimately murdered them - save one. The details of the mother and the daughters' (ages 17 and 11) plights are particularly gruesome, and I don't wish to repeat them. But they suffered in front of William, a ploy meant to enrage and permanently scar him.
Yet, he survives still.
He is upright. And walking. And talking. And he sat in that courtroom with his mother and his in-laws for every day of that trial, looking at these perpetrators of evil upon his three most precious gifts.
What devotion would that take?
Enough that an entire jury claims they found their strength - to look at graphic autopsy photos, to listen in eerie detail to such heinous crimes - and still follow the letter of the law.
I don't know what deep forces would cause my own river of life and spirit to run dry - nor do I ever wish it to be tested. Some journeys are simply best left not taken. But, watching this man, I can't help but agree with these jurors: to forge ahead, refusing slavery to hate and revenge in favor of faith, hope, and justice seems the harder way to go.
The better way to go.
And I sincerely pray for peace.
Peace for them all.
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