A little less than five years ago, my wife and I moved to an idyllic community called Kirkwood. Our first real visit, the one when we first seriously contemplated moving here after several years in France, occurred in October. Wow, what a beautiful place Kirkwood is in the fall. It reminded us of that pseudo American town we'd seen at Euro Disney outside Paris: clean streets, music coming from the storefronts, everyone smiling and car horns used only to say hello. We kept expecting to see Opie walking down the street with his fishing pole over his shoulder.

A few years later, I still haven't met Aunt Bee, and Opie apparently grew up and moved on. Long ago, I digested a basic lesson from ancient philosophy: Things are not always what they seem. It takes a lot of money to keep Euro Disney looking perfect and pristine. Andy Griffith isn't a folksy sheriff; he's an actor. And Kirkwood is a lovely place filled with real human beings and a history that never would be confused with the plot of a small-town sitcom.Three policemen killed in 2 years. Two boys held captive by a man who lived just blocks from my house. A beloved son and a well-liked local boy who grew into an embittered man who killed five people last Thursday and then was shot and killed by police. These are the horrid realities of our community.

We can hide behind "we'll get past it," which is true enough, but the question is how we will do so.I suggest that we must begin by recognizing our brokenness and also feeling the hope of our healing.

I suggest that we must consider two things simultaneously. The first point is simple and provides us with some needed clarity. The second is complex and forces us to levels of empathy that, frankly, are uncomfortable. Holding these two thoughts simultaneously is not easy. But I believe it is essential. The first is this: Cookie Thornton did an unspeakably evil act that never can be excused or justified. The second is that his act cannot be divorced completely from the realities and perceptions of our broken city.

Violence is never OK. Period. No one explained this more eloquently than Martin Luther King Jr. did in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:". . . Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. 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. . . . It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."

In the best tradition of the Bible and prophets, violence is an unacceptable means to any end. But too often we confuse the absence of violence with the presence of peace. Violence is never an option, but — and here's the harder part — neither is complacency. Neither is acting as if years of slavery, racism, Jim Crow laws and economic depravity make no difference in a people's perception of reality.

On Friday, I attended a meeting called by Harriet Patton of the Meacham Park Improvement Association. The meeting confirmed one clear and undeniable truth about Kirkwood specifically and about Saint Louis generally: We've got some work to do in healing the racial divide. The perception gap is wide. The ugly history of our past has reached into our present, and if we are not vigilant, it will destroy our future.Joe Cole, who is 89 and who has worked to improve race relations in the community for decades, said this of Mr. Thornton: "Everybody said he lost his brain. No, hate got into him. He couldn't stop the hate."

This man let hate eat him alive, but let us not demonize him. We must all beware of hate, and remember that most atrocities have been carried out by otherwise normal folks. Mr. Thornton's actions aren't explained by racism or discrimination; it's not that simple. But if any good can come of this tragedy, it would be if it forced us in Kirkwood to look even more intently at the needs and perceptions of all the people in our community and start forging relationships, building ties. We must seek to listen, to know and to hear.

This is exactly what Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda encouraged at a meeting I attended with him about a year ago. He said, to put it very politely, that we white ministers needed to do more to establish and improve communications with people who live in Meacham Park. Partly because of his encouragement, I began to meet more of my Meacham neighbors.

The Kirkwood Ministerial Alliance now has a renewed commitment to ensure that we do just that. At the meeting at which we planned last Friday night's vigil, we also set a meeting time to begin doing our part. And where is the long-term hope for our community?

The Apostle Paul said in his great letter to the Romans: "Hope that is seen is no hope at all."We hope for what is yet to be. We envision what we cannot see. We imagine what we can't image. We witness what we can't observe. This capacity is our only hope. It is at once the source and cause of our hope. If we see only what is, if we are able to perceive only the community of today, if we see only what now is the case, we never will work towards what can be.

Four beloved community members went to a meeting last Thursday night. Another just went to work. All assumed it would be a routine evening, that they would perform their respective duties and then go home.Most of us proceed through much of life this way until something wakes us up and reminds us that we don't have the control we think we do. We can despair of this fate, or we can live each moment, each day, understanding its significance and with the knowledge that it could be our last. Five public servants died serving their community. I hope the same can be said of me someday. And, perhaps, if more of us become similarly faithful, someday the reality of our commuunity will be more like what it seems to be.

This "guest commentary" was in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch on Feb. 14, 2008.
By Scott L. Stearman