Once more, we’re pausing amidst a crowded season to mark “Gratitude Tuesday.” It’s our fourth-annual RCND practice aimed at the profound, everyday thanksgiving that—as poet David Whyte has it—“happens whenever our sense of presence meets all other presences.” In other words, friends, today we celebrate your enlivening presence within our Coalition. Reflecting on the beautiful exchange of that immeasurable gift, we find ourselves giving particular thanks for:
Twenty-nine years on, this embodied love and labor is what fuels RCND’s pursuit of boundless belonging across every social distance. Paying close attention to that shared journey this Tuesday, we find ourselves giving particular thanks for:
- The spaces you help create. Such as some 70 folks—already, after 30 months apart—returning to break bread and share life together at two Community Luncheon Roundtables this fall. Or hundreds of neighbors gathering (for the first time since 2019) to celebrate the homecoming of neighbors we incarcerated, and (for the 30th time) to name and mourn neighbors taken by our violence during 2021. And in the background, communities of RCND volunteers coalescing into three Reflection Circles (Vigil, Reentry, RJ) committed to the holistic work that emerges from opening ourselves to the harm we cause one another.
- The collaborations you make possible. Like civic agencies meeting everyday citizens in the public-private work of RJ diversion, reentry, and survivor care. Or the dozens of congregations who trust us to embody their values in Durham. And above all, every in-between space where subtly competing agencies and organizations blend into communities of mutual service.
- The stories we hold, together. Because most every day, shared life in this diverse Coalition of hundreds nudges us toward the deep intersection between our best hopes and our communal pain. Shepherding survivors of two intra-family homicides through a restorative conferencing process, and then accompanying another through the trauma of a multi-week court trial. Walking in mutually transformative relationship with dozens of neighbors exiting incarceration, while grieving up-close the inequitable human toll of our criminal legal system. Embracing practices of bodied witness that both transcend and reveal the deep chasm of violence at work in our community. Thirty years on, the challenging truths of how we hurt and how we might heal have never been more clear, or more complex. And as ever, we meet them better together.
Short version: 2022 has been another very good year to be the peculiar Coalition you empower us to be. So for every incalculable way your time and gifts, love and labor keep bending us towards all-of-us, we offer a simple, sincere:
THANK YOU!!
Ben Haas (Director, RCND)
11/2022