The Gift of Our Wounds

By Pardeep Singh Kaleka and Arno Michaelis

On August 5, 2018, six years after a white supremacist gunman murdered six people at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, Gift of Our Wounds magazine will launch via the magazine's website and Facebook page. Each month, seven stories of people who have found the gift in their wounds will be shared with the world — one in memory of each victim, and one to change the meaning of the shooter’s life.

This engine of healing and growth is based on the book, The Gift of Our Wounds, by Pardeep Singh Kaleka, Arno Michaelis, and Robin Gaby Fisher. The prologue of the book is the perfect appetizer in anticipation of the magazine:

Prologue

What does hate look like?

Hate looks like the body of a devoted mother of two teenage boys, crumpled inelegantly on a cold tile floor near the altar where she had been praying moments before her death. It looks like a young husband and father the way his little girl last saw him — his face ravaged by the fatal bullet that ripped through his eye and blew his head apart. And the kindly family man who lay in a vegetative state, with no hope of awakening, while his wife and children sat at his bedside praying for a miracle. And the tortured expression of a leader, mortally wounded, as he tried but failed to save his flock and himself.

Hate looks like the bullet hole in the doorframe leading into the prayer room at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin—a vestige of the carnage that took place there on August 5, 2012, when a troubled man with a distorted view of what America should look like executed peaceful people inside.

Life goes on. Services still take place at the same time every Sunday. Congregants continue to worship in the prayer room. All people are welcome to the langar (kitchen) for the free communal meal. Families who lost loved ones persevere as they continue to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

The bullet hole remains, now enshrined with a tiny plaque inscribed with the message, “We are one.”

The victims were devout souls who strived to follow the tenets of their Sikh faith to live a meritorious life of honest hard work and service to others and God. Spiritual beings who graced this earth with love, inspiration, and Chardi Kala. Translated from Punjabi, the language of the Indian region where the Sikh religion was founded, Chardi Kala means “relentless optimism.”

So why would anyone seek to harm these good people? Why would someone take the lives of his fellow human beings with such senseless cruelty?

Because hurt people hurt people. Because when suffering isn’t treated with compassion, it seethes and spreads. Because when fear isn’t met with courage, it deceives and disconnects humans from humanity. When ignorance isn’t countered with wisdom, it festers and takes root in the hearts of the fearful. When hatred isn’t cradled with kindness, it can corrupt the beauty of existence to the extreme that causing suffering is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

The killer, once as innocent and lovely a child as any other, became mired in a cycle of misery that ended in tragedy at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.

. . . and brought us together.

Pardeep Singh Kalek and Arno Michaelis, co-authors of The Gift of Our Wounds, displaying their “8-5-12” memorial tattoos

 
Rather than cultivate hatred with vengeance, we choose to commemorate our lost loved ones with the glory and grace of our common humanity. We choose to sow seeds of kindness and compassion.

Monsters are not created by God. They are shaped by the society we live in. By us. The ingredients that make monsters are hatred, suffering, isolation, and minimization. Seven people died that day, including the shooter, because one man’s untreated suffering was inflamed by fear, ignorance, and rage. What if, instead, it had been met with compassion, courage, and wisdom?

If we can find the strength to forgive the one who took the others, we can answer the tragedy with unconditional love for the entire human race. We can address conflict with care and cooperation. We can meet fear, ignorance, and hatred by teaching truth. We can shape the reality we create collaboratively to be one of uplift and healing.

We can live in honor of Paramjit Kaur and Suveg Singh Khattra and Prakash Singh and Ranjit Singh and Sita Singh and Satwant Singh Kaleka; of the lives lost in Oklahoma City and at Columbine, Sandy Hook, the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the Boston Marathon, the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the bicycle path in New York City; and of the people dying every day on the north side of Milwaukee, and on the South Side of Chicago, and in Syria, Afghanistan, the Holy Land, Mexico, Africa . . .

We can find the gift in the wound...

… if we can forgive
… with vengeance
… with purpose
… with love.

 Co-authors of The Gift of Our Wounds, Arno Michaelis and Pardeep Singh Kaleka

 
Pardeep Singh Kaleka is the eldest son of Satwant Singh Kaleka, the president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, who was gunned down during the attacks of August 5, 2012. As a former Milwaukee Police Officer and teacher in the inner city, Pardeep is no stranger to the never-ending battle against racism, fear, and ignorance. He firmly believes that the lamp of knowledge and truth will outshine all the darkness in the world, and does his best to profess this through his practice as a licensed therapist, through his work with Serve 2 Unite, and as co-author of The Gift of Our Wounds.

Arno Michaelis is a speaker, author of My Life After Hate, co-author of The Gift of Our Wounds, and Director of Serve 2 Unite. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arno was a leader of hate groups, and the frontman of the hate-metal band Centurion before single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated helped to change his world, bringing love for diversity and gratitude for all life.