RECENTLY several media outlets carried reporting upon the attack against MH17 by Ukraine rebels that was particularly distressing.
The falling of Mystery Woman No. 26 into the home of Inna Tipunova personified intensely the failure to care for one of our own.
Then the words from Inna Tipunova, also a Ukraine resident.
She recounted how “… everyone cried for two days in the village … and then everyone knew what we had to do …”.
Finally, I thought, some sort of restoration of right behaviour towards Mystery Woman No. 26.
When we fly we rely on so many people doing the right things to make the journey safe.
The image of the body falling surely symbolises all the absences of those “right things” from the technical to the political.
That absence was compounded by reactions like mine, which raised a desire in me to think the worst of the perpetrators and to have feelings of revenge.
Surely they are monsters, I asked myself.
Miraculously Tipunova’s words brought home to me that the perpetrators, her countrymen, are what the New Testament called “skandalon”; less murderers than people needing forgiveness.
Her words made me realise my own need for forgiveness, my own scandal.
My own reaction unveiled just how much we are all beguiled into seemingly logical acts of self-authentication.
For the rebels these acts eventually lead to Mystery Woman 26 falling, powerless, hopelessly broken apart.
Are they the only blind Pharisees?
That reporting underscored all the wrong. The path back up, skywards, maybe even heavenwards, is begun.
Forgive us our sins, lovely woman of mystery, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not to be tempted to retaliate, free us from this evil.
May we not be tempted to think that it is too late to love as the victims should have been loved.
Vince Hodge
Paddington QLD
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