Episcopal Press and News
Hands in Healing Reaches out for Peace in the Cities
Episcopal News Service. April 18, 2002 [2002-099]
Robert Williams, Director of diocesan communications and public affairs for the Diocese of Los Angeles
(ENS) Driving from Hollywood-area gang turf to the Wyoming roadside where co-ed Matthew Shepard was fatally gay-bashed, Los Angeles' Episcopal bishop and 12 young Southern Californians will travel on to Las Vegas, Omaha, Chicago, Detroit, New York's Ground Zero, and the Washington National Cathedral--all in an April 19-June 5 cross-country trek called "Hands in Healing," addressing violence perpetrated against youth and families.
By charting this course at the outset of his new ministry as chief pastor to the six-county Diocese of Los Angeles and its 85,000 members, Bishop J. Jon Bruno-himself a former Burbank police officer-is calling people of faith everywhere to "simple acts of courage" to stop domestic violence, gang activity, hate crimes, and other forms of aggression.
"Rosa Parks kept her seat on a bus, and that moment defined the rest of the civil rights movement," Bruno said in a recent interview outlining the tour, which includes return-route pilgrimages to Atlanta, Montgomery and Memphis sites honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "As our own van moves across country, the young people and I will contemplate, from our own bus seats, how we can act more courageously to see that peace and justice prevails over violence now and into the future."
Reflecting on cycles of violence
The bishop, who has hand-picked the young adults participating on the tour, has designed the trek to include site-specific theological reflections that address cycles of violence. In Oklahoma City, for example, the group will consider not only the carnage of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, but also the death penalty by which the accused perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, was executed.
Joining Bruno in planning and guiding the theological reflections are Sara Clinehens and Michael Cooper, both of whom recently began work on the diocesan staff as advisors for youth ministry. Clinehens and Cooper, who will travel along the tour route, are collaborating with Wendie Roberts, new diocesan missioner for Christian formation, in shaping both the program and its cadre of young participants.
The trek will reach its mid-point on Memorial Day weekend in Washington, DC, where Bruno is scheduled to preach that Sunday, May 26, at the National Cathedral.
Gathering stories
Under the theme of "Hands in Healing: Reaching Peace for Youth and Cities," the trek will involve participants who have experienced violence in close proximity. One participant has lost two brothers killed in gang shootings; two have lived under apartheid in South Africa; others have taken stands against domestic violence, racism and homophobia; all have experienced in various ways the trauma of the September 11 terror attacks.
In each community they visit, the L.A. young people will seek to engage peers in other cities to learn their respective experiences with violence, and to share in dialogue, prayer and theological reflection.
One objective of the trek is to gather stories to inform an interactive, multigenerational and on-line curriculum that is being developed through the diocesan Office of Communications and Public Affairs, which is coordinating the full Hands in Healing initiative on the bishop's behalf.
As the van crosses the nation, the bishop and some participants will travel by plane in order to balance weekend "Hands in Healing" events with work-week schedules in Los Angeles. Adult supervisors will travel with the van full time.
The national tour follows a six-part series of diocesan county-based forums addressing issues of violence within the Southland, the last of which was held April 6 in Los Angeles.