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Good
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 Sermon
05/16/10
Journey
of Hope ~ by Bess Klassen-Landis
May 16, 2010 Seventh Sunday of Easter,
Restorative Justice Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
A Blessing for
Grief by the Irish
priest and poet John O’Donahue:
When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
Some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no
confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of
absence deepens.
There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black
tide of loss.
Gradually, you
will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form
of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss
will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in
the air
And be able to enter the hearth in your soul
where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.
Journey of Hope Reflection
I first took part in the Journey of Hope: From
Violence to Healing, in October of 2005. The Journey of Hope is a speaking
campaign against the death penalty, founded by Bill Pelke, whose grandmother was murdered by a gang
of teenage girls in Chicago.
Although originally for the death penalty, Bill fought to get
15 year old Paula Cooper off of death row, when he realized that his
grandmother wouldn’t want Paula to be executed. Bill’s
grandmother had spent her life sharing the Gospel of Love.
Speakers on the Journey
include family members of murder victims, family
members of executed prisoners, death row family members, individuals
who were on death row until DNA evidence exonerated them and death penalty activists.
In 2005, I joined the Journey in Texas,
where more than 1/3 of the executions in this nation take place. The Texas Journey members visited
dozens of churches, schools, universities, and civic
organizations. It covered:
17 days, 34 cities, 160 venues, AND 76 people took part in some or all of the J.
In
Oct. 2006, I traveled with
the Journey across Virginia. On average, it takes about 9 years for
someone on death row who has been wrongfully convicted to be
exonerated. In Virginia, they
execute their death row inmates on average after 6 years.
My oldest sister, Ruth,
had taken part in the first Journey of Hope in 1993, in Indiana,
and again in 1994, in Georgia. Our
family was still unable to talk easily about our mother’s
murder, and consequently, Ruth did not initiate conversations
about her experience on the Journey at that time.
In January of 2005 she
invited me to come with her on the Journey to
Texas. I immediately told her
that I would. I didn’t
know much about the Journey, but knew if she needed me to be there, I
would do that for her. She told me it would change my
life. Again, I
didn’t know in what way to expect change, but I was willing to
find out. October was a long
way off. I have never liked public speaking, and in fact, would
do almost anything to get out of it, yet I knew that I would be asked
to speak on the Journey if I could.
To tell the story of my mother’s murder and why I was
against the death penalty.
Because the images
that I have had to encounter anytime I really put myself back at the
time of my mother’s death are so horrible, I waited until two
weeks before the Journey to finally prepare my own statement.
I
come from a Mennonite
family and church. The Mennonites are a pacifist church. So,
intellectually I had always been against the death penalty. But after
my mother was murdered, my
understanding grew out of my own, rather than my ancestor’s
experience of tragedy, fear, remorse and hope. I had to really deal
with my thoughts about what to do with a person who had committed an
atrocity. Someone who made me
feel wretched and unsafe.
My sister Ruth was right.
The Journey changed my life. By immersing myself again in my pain, in
telling my story on the Journey. I found a surprising answer. I found
that my deepest pain was transformed into love.
In 1965,
just four years before my mother’s death, our home and our
whole neighborhood was destroyed at the ground level by a mammoth
tornado. Like that terrifying storm, was my mom’s murder. Sudden,
unexpected and violent. The aftermath of her death caused similar
devastation, but of the heart, and the psyche. Destruction that
rippled out and touched hundreds of lives.
My mother,
Helen Ruth Bohn Klassen was beat, striped, raped,
strangled and shot 4 times in our home while my sisters and I were at
school and my father was in the next state, working as a consulting
psychiatrist for a small Mennonite college. My younger sister Suzy
came home alone on the first bus to discover mom in a pool of her
blood.
Her
murder happened on March 14,
1969, before DNA testing was a reality. Although the police
identified seven suspects, there was never a conviction, or anyone
put behind bars. Most of the suspects continued to be our neighbors,
or live in our community.
My
response to my mother’s death was magnified by the fact that
her murderer remained on the loose. This added a level of fear to my
life that was both real and imagined.
I was at a critical point in my development at13 years old. I learned
that I was not safe, my home was not safe and that it was not a safe thing
to grow into a woman.
The day of my mom’s
funeral, my dad told my sisters and I that we should be strong and show the community
how to go on. My family had
been exploded and silenced. We each new the depths of the
others’ pain and would not burden each other with our own.
Although I
went ahead and played volleyball and basketball, sang in a folk band,
expressed myself in art, and was in the National Honor Society, I
walked with my head bowed between classes and immediately pulled out
a book when I got to class, so no one would talk to me or see behind
my mask. I could not voice out
loud to anyone, my utter despair, grief, fear or rage. I needed to
pretend for others that I wasn’t being torn apart inside, that
I wasn’t afraid to live in a home with bullet holes in the
floor and sliver finger print lifting spray on the walls and
furniture, and that our family was doing okay.
The incongruency of my
outer self and my inner feelings was almost
intolerable and produced tremendous feelings of failure.
I dealt with symptoms of
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the next 37 years.
In
the early years I needed to:
--visualize a dead body on the
floor any time I needed to walk into the next room, open a door or
turn on a light.
- fear
and nightmares paralyzed my growth.
-I believed that Mom’s
murderer knew where I was at all times--was always watching me, and
would kill me before I had a chance to grow up.
--I created escape plans
constantly in my mind as I moved around my own home. This was
especially scary when I spent almost five years recuperating from
encephalitis and was home alone most of the time.
--The physical and psychic stress
of my being hyper vigilant for many years, on fight or flight
standby, created an over active immune system and many, many
environmental and food allergies.
When I would hear about
awful crimes, murders of young children, and the
murderer had been convicted and given the death penalty, something
very smug inside of me said “good. He deserves it. I don’t care about you at
all.” In my mind, I
imagined my mother’s murderer could be no less than someone
damaged beyond control.
Someone who was so sick, that they were unredeemable in this
world. I didn’t voice these feelings out loud to
anyone. I was not proud of
these feelings. They became a part of the shame that was already
silently buried within me.
Over the years I had a
great deal of healing in my life.
I was able to experience much joy in raising
our two children with my husband, Marv, and
felt successful in my work. But even after much spiritual healing,
over many years, I still had not been able to overcome, or redeem all
the pain and fear in my life. I
had not found a way to give back to the world such an enormous gift,
that it could somehow help cancel out the pain of Mom’s death.
This gift of course, is the gift of love. Love is the only thing that
can redeem death.
With the Journey of Hope,
in Texas and Virginia, I met for the first time, dozens of my peers; people
who knew what it was like to have someone in their family murdered.
By
publicly telling my story, I
exposed and then released all the ugly feelings of fear and shame that
had filled the hidden spaces of my being, and I forgave myself for my failures, for not having been
the person that I knew I was meant to be: Healthy, fearless, and joyful.
I met people who in their
own search for answers, visited in prison, the
person who had murdered a loved one in their family. They needed to
see them and ask them why. In particular, I think of Sue Norton and Aba Gayle. Aba Gayle
says that when she looked into the visiting room on death row, there
were no monsters in sight.
Only human beings. Men
visiting with their families.
Both Sue and Aba Gayle found a man
who was deeply remorseful for what he had done, and was grateful for
the opportunity to say he was sorry.
They found men in need of support. In repeated visits, they became
their friends. Sue was there to support B,K.
Knight when he was executed, at his request.
I know that ending
another person’s life, even if they have
committed a heinous crime, will never redeem my or anyone
else’s pain. Only Love can redeem pain.
The last thing my mother
would have wanted would be for an act of violence to be committed in
her name.
I believe that all people
have that of God within them.
It was only the grace of
God that enabled me to find new life and to keep
searching, over and over again when I was in despair.
Who am I
to take that possibility away from someone else?
I believe that we are all
instruments in healing the hatred in this world.
We will never do it with violence. We will do it step by step, by
eradicating hunger, poverty and disease. We will do it by reaching out again and again in love to
our enemies. And I now know in my heart that those on death row are
not our enemies.
The great majority of
them have been victims many times over themselves.
We know that over 136 people since 1976 who were condemned to death
have since been set free because of evidence that showed that they
were innocent. Our judicial system is not foolproof, and has not been
fair or impartial. It has been a system that has worked for whites
over people of color, and for those with money to hire good lawyers
over those that have little or none. Politicians tell us time and
time again, that the death penalty must be reserved for the
“worst of the worst.”
But I now know that this is not how it is used. The death penalty is reserved for
the poorest of the poor.
From the examples of Sue Norton and Aba Gayle, I began to visualize myself visiting
my mother’s murderer in prison. Even though I
don’t know who murdered my mom, or where he is, I came to know
that if I were able to visit him in prison, that I would eventually
be able to call him friend. Because
I would look for and wait, until “that of God” was
evident within him. It has
taken me a very long time to come to this place of inner peace
and forgiveness.
In forgiveness I found an
avenue to transform my life’s experiences of pain and give them
back to the world as Love.
I had to come face to
face with my own deep shadow-side, all the ugly
feelings that were crammed inside me, stemming from fear. It is said that we are as sick as
our deepest secret. I believe
that that is true. The parts of ourselves that we
hide in shame, that we cannot forgive, keep us from experiencing the
totality of love.
To heal, victims need to find their own humanity
again. In order for me to heal, I needed to feel
safe and I needed to be able to see the humanity in my mother’s
murderer. I share about the pain in my
life and I fight against the death penalty with the hope of
transforming darkness into light, and fear into love. I work for peace-by starting with
my own heart.
(Book of Matthew, Chapter
25: 42-45 (From
the book of Matthew, Jesus said)
44 … 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in
prison, and not minister to your needs?'
45 He
will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of
these least brothers of
mine, you did not for me.')
Authors
For many years I
had a fantasy that one of my favorite authors, Chaim
Potok, Margaret Atwood, or Barbara
Kingsolver would write my family’s story. They would understand it in all it’s complexity, and would give it order and
most importantly would write the last chapter, where everything would
be explained, resolved and closed.
When I finally
forgave my mother’s murderer, I found a final chapter I could
live with, even if it didn’t have all the answers or resolve
all the pain. It felt like standing under a cleansing waterfall. I found the peace that I had been
yearning for.
Forgiveness is not a mantel
that we lay on someone else’s shoulder as a blessing. Forgiveness is something we do for
ourselves, to cleanse our soul.
I do not expect justice
from a court of law to resolve my feelings over my mother’s
death. The death penalty does not provide
resolution to victims.
The justice that I expect
in this world is my own heart and voice resolved to do no evil.
If I can resist evil and can reach out in love, then the force that
ended my mom’s life has not totally destroyed me.
“Living
lives in the Power of Love:
What
matters is living our lives in the power of love and not worrying too
much about the results. In doing this, the means become part of the
end. Hence we lose the sense of helplessness and futility in the face
of the world’s crushing problems.
We
also lose the craving for success, always focusing on the goal to the
exclusion of the way of getting there. We must literally not take too
much thought for the morrow, but throw ourselves wholeheartedly into
the present. That is the beauty of the way of love, it cannot be
planned and its end cannot be foretold “
----New
England Yearly
Meeting Faith and Practice: Wolf Mendl:
prophets and reconcilers:
reflections on The Quaker peace testimony. p. 188.
I would like to end with a song,
that I wrote for the youngest class of children at the Hanover
Meeting. I was asked to share my music ministry with them. I decided to write them a song expressing everything
I believed in, in three simple verses. So you’ll have to listen
deeply. Behind the simple words are layers of meaning.
When you hear me say :
--“Love,”
I am talking about the defining, healing order in the universe.
--“Night,”
-night encompasses the deepest shadow parts of our existence, but
also that place of waiting, where our own agendas no longer matter
and we are open to the v0ice of God.
--“Treasures found
within” I am referring to the hidden intricacies found
throughout the natural world, as well as to that of God within each
of us.
-- “Tiny seeds [that] sprout,
though deprived of light,’” I am talking about the
grace of God that can touch us at any time and help us grow into the
light.
Bigger World
We are a part of a
bigger world.
It includes
planets and galaxies.
It includes love,
It includes night.
We are the sisters
and brothers of light.
Open up your
heart, help the world to heal,
Multiply the joy
that you feel.
We are a part of a
tiny world.
It includes life
forms too small to see.
It includes a
plan, hidden from man,
Beautiful,
growing, treasures found within.
Open up your
heart, help the world to heal,
Multiply the joy
that you feel.
We are a part of a
faithful world.
Tiny seeds sprout,
though deprived of light.
In the spring we
hear, birds mating songs so clear.
Dry grass
replaced, with greenery everywhere.
Open up your
heart, help the world to heal,
Multiply the joy
that you feel.
Open up your heart, help the world to heal, Multiple the joy
that you feel.
Bess Klassen-Landis Ó2005
A Blessing
by John O’Donahue
To Come Home to Yourself
May all that is unforgiving in you be released
May your fears yield
their deepest tranquilities
May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced
with love
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