The young man who murders the author’s sister-in-law and her two teenaged nephews hides in the garage in an affluent neighborhood, and waits until they are asleep. In the night, he bludgeons and stabs them to death and flees. The perpetrator is the boy across the street, a family friend, 19 years old.
Lost in grief, Judith falls into the welcoming arms of Zen. Five years later, through her newfound practice of daily mindfulness and meditation, she spontaneously forgives the killer. But before she can go to him and say, “I forgive you,” he hangs himself to death in his prison cell. Later, on the phone with the killer’s mother, the two women cry together.
Here is the intimate, revealing story of Judith’s life, and her love affair with Zen. After being ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh, whose teachings abound in this book, she goes on to lead mindfulness practice in a medium-security prison where some of the young men know the murderer. Then Charles hangs himself. The killer’s suicide does not relieve the family’s grief. Toy believes it is a kind of moral regression for society to continue to legalize murder for murder. “There is no such thing as closure, only a call to love.”
This is the gripping tale of one woman walking through fire. It is an inner story of adventure, loss, torment…and in the end, forgiveness and an awakening to deep peace. This is a true tale of transformation.
Murder as a Call to Love is the first book by a surviving member of a family mass murder to identify mindfulness as her turning point toward forgiveness and love. Already recognized by our country’s top Buddhist editor, Melvin McCleod, as worthy of Shambhala’s Best Buddhist Writing, 2006, the story that was the seed of this book was first told at Plum Village in 2001, at a Hiroshima commemoration ceremony by the author, Judith Toy, student of the renowned Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Six excerpts from the book were published prior to the book itself.