After 48 years of teaching from pre-kindergarten to post-high school, I have a very personal and passionate interest in young people; our most precious resource.

So it is with overwhelming sadness that I read and hear of the many instances of hateful words and actions from these children. Too many of the responses to these stories seem only to compound and inflame. Half of the people blaming the other half of the people is a lose-lose deal.

I see this as a national emergency needing an extraordinary response. I humbly urge Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to take a lesson from the Amish at West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and the Charleston AME survivors, and forgive.

As Bishop Desmond Tutu has said, the process of forgiveness is “astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.”

My suggestion is for Clinton and Trump to meet and make a joint plea of forgiveness to mend the tears in our social fabric and stop our human community from unraveling. A plea to the neighbors to reach across the boundaries that divide, to see beyond the politics, and share our common dreams. This act could be one of the hardest they have ever done and one of the greatest gifts they have ever given.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote. “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. … I have decided to stick to love. … Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Lin Parker

Penobscot