Murder forgiven: Mother, wife of Mumbai attack victims sends message of peace

Nearly a year after terrorist bullets snuffed the life forces of her husband and daughter, Nelson County resident Kia Scherr hopes her new Web site will help other people find positive forces in their own lives.

Scherr helped to create the One Life Alliance site to promote discussion of the “sacred nature and interconnectedness” of human life in response to the Nov. 26, 2008, terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that killed her family. She designed the site with Master Charles Cannon, founder of the Synchronicity Foundation, which espouses meditation and peaceful, holistic living. Scherr is a long-time foundation member, as were her family members.

Alan Scherr, 58, and Naomi Scherr, 13, died when Islamic terrorists attacked the Oberoi Trident Hotel where they stayed. Terrorists held the hostelry for three days in one of a series of orchestrated assaults that killed more than 150.

The Scherrs were in India with Cannon and 23 other Synchronicity members for a two-week spiritual retreat. Six other Charlottesville-area residents were at the retreat, but were not injured.

Four foundation members from out of the area were also wounded.

Surviving hotel guests barricaded themselves in their rooms for two days as exploding grenades and gunfire reverberated through the halls and the hotel filled with smoke from fires in other areas of the building. When it was over, the Scherrs were found under a cafeteria table, shot dead.

“I was basically shot along with them, just not physically,” Kia Scherr recalled. “I was in shock. I wasn’t really numb, but I was definitely in shock because I lost both of them and it was so sudden, so violent, so unexpected, so public and it was the result of terrorism.”

Mohammad Amir Ajmal Kasab, 21, a Pakistani national, has confessed to his part in the killings. He is the only surviving terrorist in the group that staged as many as a dozen different attacks. He faces the death penalty.

Scherr said she is leaving the issue of justice to Mumbai officials, although she does not favor capital punishment. Cannon said the group still grieves, but has focused on forgiving the attackers and looking at possible positive outcomes of the experience.

“We lost people very dear to us and have had to move through a horrendous experience,” he said. “The baseline experience for most people is to look at life in a life-negative, fear-based response. For us, the question was how did we want to respond in this situation? Did we want to be negative or positive? Who did we want to be?”

Scherr said the loss ripped apart the life she knew and forced her to reevaluate life’s meaning.

“The depth of my grief and the emotions just ripped me open,” she said. “I became exposed to all of the feelings and it made me more available to all of my feelings,” she said. “It was a nightmare, but Mumbai happened and there’s nothing we could do about it. There’s nothing we can do about it. Now that it happened, we are left in a position of wondering, now what? What do we do now?”

That question led her to work with Cannon to develop the Web site.

“There’s always going to be violence. Life has two poles and in its negative polarity is where things like Mumbai happen. Terrorism is negative polarity in the extreme. The message from the Web site is that there are other ways to choose to respond to violence,” Scherr said. “The Web site helps people see that peace and power can go together.”

“I think it’s absolutely remarkable how she has worked through this,” Cannon said. “Still, I don’t know how you recover from losing a husband and child at the same time. I don’t know if you can ever recover from that. The recovery and trauma are life-long experiences.”

Scherr said notes of caring that come from all over the world, and her neighborhood, help her to heal.

“After Mumbai, we received more than 900 messages from all over the world on the Synchronicity Web site and the majority were from people we never met. They came from Peru, Europe and India. They came from Christians and Jews and Muslims. There were a lot of messages from Muslims who said ‘this is not Islam. Islam is of peace.’ They were heartfelt messages,” she said.

“When I’d go into town to get coffee and groceries, people that I’d seen several times but really didn’t know would come up and tell me how sorry they were and hug me. They really cared. That was a wonderful feeling,” she said. “People I didn’t know were reaching out.”

Words of succor and support helped, but Scherr felt she had to take action. From that action sprang http://www.onelifealliance.org.

“For me to feel like I could go on, I had to contribute something positive,” she said. “I focused on the positive message that is found in all religions, the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you want them to do unto you is at the core of most religions. Those who create violence in the name of religion are separated from their own religion.”

The site emphasizes the positive in life, Scherr and Cannon said.

“We thought the best we could do would be to evolve the value of life by encouraging the conversation wherever and whenever we went,” Cannon said. “This being the information age, we were able to develop a Web site and people from across the world and the country could contribute to the conversation. Changes have to happen in a grassroots level of people talking about life.”

“You emphasize the positive to create balance by increasing life’s positive polarity. There are people out there doing amazing works of peace, and that’s where you have to keep your focus,” Scherr said. “We have to provide for our defense, but we should emphasize the positive things we are doing, the way we help others and the good we do. We have to recognize the negative, but we shouldn’t focus on it.”

Scherr said life is a common experience between all humans. Recognizing that common ground would help prevent future Mumbai-style incidents.

“Life is our commonality. We live it differently and experience it differently, but if we honor the sacredness in first ourselves and then in others, it changes the way we interact with each other,” she said. “The greatest contribution you can make to world peace is to be peaceful within yourself. Over time, maybe we can reduce the negative influence.”

“With the Web site, we simply want to inspire and encourage a conversation about the sacredness and connectedness of life,” Cannon said. “We want to do that because without life, we have nothing.”