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| Remembering…Healing ... HOPE |
At 4 p.m. the Presbyterian New England Congregational Church
will be full of people remembering…grieving…honoring… and healing. There will be many familiar faces
from past vigils. Their grief may be less raw…time
moves forward; but their losses no less devastating. Other
faces are new; this is their first vigil.
Each year District Attorney Jim Murphy honors individuals
who have committed their lives to supporting crime victims and protecting their
right. These folks always seem humbled by the recognition; they do this difficult work not for glory, but for
justice.
The heart wrenching stories of how crime has taken a son or
daughter, has shattered dreams, or has
left a survivor forever scarred, remind me that newspaper accounts about crime
can’t possibly convey it’s impact. I think we become desensitized as we read
the paper or watch the evening news; the vigil has the opposite effect.
Each year I’m left with one haunting image. There is a scroll
with the names of victims written on it. Each year more names are added to the
scroll. I recall a decade ago when I first attended the vigil that the unrolled
scroll reached to the first few pews of the church. At my first vigil looking at
all the names on the scroll I was overcome with sadness. Each year as the scroll
unrolls farther down the aisle, almost past the confines of the room, I think, “Is
there no end?”
Such sadness--you may
question why I go year after year. Because, like Pandora’s box, just when all
seems lost the vigil evokes a beaming light radiating throughout the room- Hope. In a room filled with people
whose lives have been shattered by crime and whose loved ones have been taken from
them, there is support, healing and hope. May we soon see the day when that
scroll stops with not one more name added.
Crime
Victims’ Vigil
4
p.m. Sunday April 21, 2013
New
England Congregational Church
24 Circular
Street, Saratoga Springs
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