Amidst a(nother) violent year in Durham, we’d like to share this closing prayer from our 29th Annual Vigil Against Violence in October 2021. Held outdoors some eight months later than usual, it provided a reminder of just how vital it is to create communal spaces where every name is called and every body is welcome. And also, of how many neighbors continue to join us in that immeasurable work.
“We’d like to go forth now with a shared prayer for our community. It’s one adapted from across an ocean. And in another way, across a pandemic, since we prayed a similar prayer together to close our last public gathering as a Coalition (this same Annual Vigil) in February 2020.
At that time, we invited neighbors to pull close across a church aisle and hold hands. One month later, the same gathering would have been illegal and unimaginable. And at that time, this quilt was outside of a church sanctuary that couldn’t comfortably hold it and all of us both. Twenty months later, we’ve found reason to reckon anew with how many of our communal spaces are built in ways that segregate our best imagination from our deep grief. On that February evening, our hope was to leave with renewed imagination for a Durham that names and owns the costs of our violence, and centers the neighbors bearing its inequitable human toll. In the light of this October morning, we want to depart in that same fierce hope.
So we’d ask you to stand as you’re able, and gather this quilt—every precious name it holds—in among us. Let us pray.”
God of all humanity,
God of the spaces between us,
and the fractures within us.
Of the places we know best,
and the ones we’ve yet to discover:
God older than then,
newer than now.
We stand here today in the wake
in grief for all the sacred life taken from us.
In grief for all we have taken (and kept) from each other.
— — —
In grief, we give thanks
that there are gifts beyond our withholding,
truths older and deeper than our apathy and fear.
That in our life and in our death
we belong with each other.
That we are never truly alone in our sorrows,
never alone in our joy.
That each name and every body
are stitched together with holy thread.
— — —
And yet, standing here today
we face the full measure of our seperation,
the deep chasm between
what is and what should be.
And where there is separation
there is pain.
And where there is pain
there is story.
And where there is story,
there is understanding,
and misunderstanding,
listening
and not listening.
So may we here today —
separated peoples, estranged strangers,
unfriended neighbors, divided communities —
turn toward each other,
and leave here turned toward our stories,
with understanding
and listening,
with argument
and acceptance,
with challenge
and change,
and consolation.
— — —
For if you, God, are to be found,
if peace is to be found,
if justice is to be found,
where Love is still to be found in this Durham of ours,
they will be found
in the space between,
in the new life we build together.
So we ask all these things, humbly,
and with expectation,
in the name of all that is holy.
Amen.
10/2021
[Gratefully adapted from prayers written for (“Prayer for Reconcilitation”) and by (“Prayers for Community in a Time of Pandemic”) the Corrymeela Community, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. Even across an ocean, we continue to find deep resonance and kindred spirit in this “community that believes people can live and work well together.”]