Dear Friends,
In the office, we bend over hundreds and hundreds of white paper sacks—scooping mugs full of dusty sand into the bottom of each, dropping in the little electric candles, straightening the name tags. The luminaries are ready. The names of those we honor or mourn pasted on the face of each, I find the name of my dad in the jumble. Rasheeda (Community Engagement Coordinator), Jess (Guest Services Coordinator) and I pull open the door of the administration building, bracing for the cold wind. We only have a few minutes of daylight left to set up the rows of lights before the jazz concert highlighting our non-violence efforts in partnership with Warren B. Cooper’s “Pass the Peace Protocol” begins at dark in the Event Center. The bags keep blowing over. “We need rocks!” “How far apart do we space them?” “Too close?” “ Which side?” We struggle to right the bags, line both sides of the driveway leading to the historic house, drop small river rocks into each before they topple over.
I rush from the driveway to the house to meet with our partners who are working toward non-violence in the city. Once inside, I nod hello to Fran who is dressed in 19th-century costume, conducting tours of the house, sharing the story of the Suffragists who once gathered there, and I run up the stairs to meet up with the Director of The Peace Center, Danny Thomas. On the third floor, we share plans for how we can do our separate work together. The room grows dark as we talk. Danny switches on the light.
Sr. Maria once shared with me one of her favorite quotes from Catherine McAuley: “I would like to tell you all the little cheering things that God permits to fall in our way.” Maria confides that this way of paying attention has given her joy and hope—even during times when all feels dark, all seems difficult, all seems lost. Days later, I feel this cheer again in the brave words of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, asking the president “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
Earlier in December, Margie (Program Director) and I met with the women from Mothers In Charge. Each attending the program has experienced losing a child to gun-violence and they have come to Cranaleith seeking ways to tell their stories. I draw a squiggly line on the whiteboard and talk about how trauma scrambles the clean lines of narratives, how we find our way by focusing, first, on our senses, on our small real moments—the light in the room, the weight of a rock, the colors, the smells, taste. From all those tiny, little details, our stories can emerge in powerful ways. From sight, we find insight.
In our darkness that we share together, maybe we can look for little lights placed in small white sacks lining the driveway, lighting our way on the very night of the Winter Solstice. If we look closely enough together, maybe we can find our way to a warm room full of people, listening to jazz, yearning for peace and hope.
In Peace and Mercy,
Dawn L. Hayward
Executive Director
