His voice cracked slightly as he read aloud the note.

Donald B. Kraybill had just concluded the opening address at "The Power of Forgiveness: Lessons from Nickel Mines," a daylong conference Thursday at Elizabethtown College.

At the end of the address, he read a brief statement from Christ King, one of the parents whose children were at the Nickel Mines school on Oct. 2, 2006, when Charles Carl Roberts IV, an emotionally troubled milk truck driver, opened fire.

Five young Amish girls died. Five more were wounded.

Roberts killed himself as police broke into the school.

But King's note wasn't about recriminations or anguish. It was a note of simple gratitude.

He gave an update on the surviving girls. Four are doing well, he said, while one — Rosanna King, now 11 — suffers the consequences of brain trauma.

"Emotionally, it has been a roller coaster ride the last five years for everybody, but it seems as if all are doing as well as can be expected," he wrote.

Kraybill's voice briefly broke with emotion as he read the final line: "Thank you again to everyone for your support and encouragement."

King and the entire Nickel Mines community forgave Roberts for his actions. It was a simple act of grace that caught the attention of the world.

"The Power of Forgiveness," presented by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, explored the root of faith that led the Amish community to offer forgiveness and comfort to Roberts' family.

"Forgiveness is a way of life," keynote speaker L. Gregory Jones said Thursday morning. "It is, at heart, a set of communal practices."

Jones, vice president and vice provost for global strategy at Duke University and a senior strategist and professor of theology at Duke Divinity School, wrote "Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis" and co-authored "Forgiving as We've Been Forgiven: Community Practices for Making Peace."

The world marveled, he said, at "the extraordinary commitment to forgiveness, instantaneously."

But it was hardly an instant response, he said.

"A commitment to forgiveness takes time," Jones said. "It is a lifelong process."

What seemed to many as an abrupt, improvised decision by members of the Amish community was actually a natural response to their way of life, he said.

"Improvisation is not making it up as you go along," he said, drawing a comparison to music. "Improvisation is when the rehearsals have been done, the habits have been developed in such a way that beautiful music can occur spontaneously, instantaneously. It's a manifestation of a lifetime of practices."

Amish faith is a daily celebration of "God's love, grace and forgiveness," Jones said. The example at Nickel Mines "bore witness to that in extraordinary ways that made the world sit up and take notice."

Thursday's seminar drew about 250 registrants from as far away as California and Nigeria, as well as Amish communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

Kraybill, a senior fellow at the Young Center and co-author of "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy" and "The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World," expounded on "the moral gravity, the challenge of how difficult it is to engage in forgiveness" — a practice for which there is no set recipe.

"It's easy to think that forgiveness happens in a certain way, that there's a formula to follow. But each case of forgiveness is unique," Kraybill said.

Nickel Mines was unique in many ways, he said, one of which was the speed with which the Amish community responded.

"There probably wouldn't be much discussion if the forgiveness had happened three or four months after the event," Kraybill said.

Members of the Amish community gathered at the Roberts home on the day of the murders.

"It was extemporaneous. It happened spontaneously," he said.

Kraybill said there were critics who said the rapid expression of forgiveness "was too quick. It wasn't healthy. We shouldn't forgive people who shoot young women."

But those feelings are alien in Amish society, Kraybill said. As one puzzled Amish man told him later, "It was just standard Christian forgiveness."tene

"In Amish teachings and in Amish practice, it's understood that it's the right thing to do," he said.

That doesn't mean it's easy. The father of one of the girls killed at Nickel Mines told Kraybill: "Every morning when I get up, I have to start all over again with forgiveness."

The act was communal in nature, Kraybill said.

"It was kind of like a moral barn-raising, so to speak, where the community was coming together to offer forgiveness. It had a kind of tribal flavor to it."

The Amish community showed a great deal of empathy, he added, noting "the Roberts family shoulders a heavier burden than we do."

More than half of the people at Roberts' funeral were Amish, he said, and they included family members of the slain girls.

"They understood they were in this together," Kraybill said.

And it went both ways, he said. Within a few months of the incident, Roberts' parents visited the homes of girls who were killed or injured.

"This took tremendous moral courage," Kraybill said. "My impulse would have been to run … to get somewhere far away."

The Amish faith relies heavily on the tenets of forgiveness, he said.

"It says it in the Lord's Prayer: 'Forgive us our transgressions as we forgive those who transgress against us.' It's right there," he said.

"But forgiveness is not about forgetting. We will never forget the Nickel Mines story," he said.

"It's not about condoning. And forgiveness is not the same as justice."

To forgive is also not to pardon, Kraybill stressed. Had Roberts survived the day, he said, the Amish community would have wanted him held accountable for his actions.

"Forgiveness doesn't necessarily lead to reconciliation. It might just mean letting go."

Forgiveness means giving up the right to revenge, Kraybill said.

"We are prisoners of the past until we forgive. Forgiveness brings freedom."

Kicking off a period of questions and answers, David Weaver-Zercher, professor of American religious history at Messiah College and co-author of "Amish Grace" and "The Amish Way," said, "Christians in North America are not particularly renowned for their forgiving ways."

The Amish response at Nickel Mines, he said, was widely regarded as "the essence of Christianity."

"Why aren't we better at forgiving?" he asked. "What are our churches failing to do in that regard?"

Afternoon seminars dealt with various aspects of forgiveness, including a reconciliation in 2010 between Lutherans and Anabaptists after 500 years of separation.

Terri Roberts, Charles Roberts' mother, spoke in the evening about her own experiences with forgiveness.

tknapp@lnpnews.com