A tragedy is unfolding in our community. One young, promising life has ended; another young man seriously wounded and other individuals traumatized by fear and bloodshed.

The effect of this violent incident goes beyond the members of the two families directly involved. All involved have friends and people who love and care for them.

There has been an understandable outpouring of emotion in the Tweets, blogs and other postings concerning this tragedy. We are a community and, as such, it is natural to come together in efforts to comfort one another. Do not make this tragedy worse than it already is by dividing into racial or cultural camps.

It is not our place to investigate, speculate, conclude or judge any of the participants. We have a professional police department, prosecutor’s office, public defenders and court system to do that. We demonstrate our confidence in them and the system by letting them do their jobs.

Our job as a community is to comfort and lift one another to a higher and nobler life. If our neighbor is ill or suffers a family emergency, don’t we offer to mow the lawn or take dinner over? We live in a community because for the vast majority of us, the quality of life is better together than alone.

The danger comes when we give in to our baser instincts and let fear and intolerance direct our actions. I can tell you that by every standard of measurement, any two human beings on this planet have more similarities than differences. Be that measure genetics or the human desire for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we have few real differences. Yet, we humans are skilled at dividing ourselves into categories.

Under stress, it is all too easy to magnify our miniscule differences into us versus them. Fear those who are different. Exclude, shun and shut out that which we fear. Fortunately, we have a brain, and this type of fear can be overcome through education, understanding and love. This process promotes tolerance.

The words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are appropriate and need to be applied in our community at this time:

“Violence in immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

My prayer is that this tragic, violent incident does not become the starting point of a heartbreaking feud in the middle of our community. Rather, let it serve as a starting point for tolerance, understanding, forgiveness and love. Do you have the courage?

– John Hayes Holman