As it has for many years, Newtown Interfaith Council (NIC) welcomed the public to a 12/14 Service of Remembrance on December 14. Trinity Episcopal Church hosted last week’s presentation, which offered a place to gather, remember and reflect.

With violinist Darwin Shen performing, attendees quietly arrived at the 36 Main Street house of worship last Thursday night for the 7 pm gathering. Trinity Minister of Music Jennifer Sisco also performed a gentle musical meditation on the piano.

The church also offered a livestream option.

Reverend Andrea Castner Wyatt welcomed those who joined her and fellow interfaith council members on Thursday. On either side of her, tables were filled with votive holders with candles. Most candles were in clear glass, but 26 green holders had been placed in the shape of a heart on each table, representing the number of people killed 11 years earlier at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

After acknowledging those seated before her as well as those “praying and remembering with us from home,” Trinity’s rector noted it was “a solemn and sacred night here in Newtown. It is good to be together in this time as we remember lives lost 11 years ago at the Sandy Hook School.”

Castner Wyatt said she and her fellow interfaith council members “welcome you, and wish you peace of heart and mind and body and spirit.”

The evening was similar to previous services, with representatives from many communities of faith participating. A representative from Al Hedaya offered the Call to Gathering, “what we call the Adhan,” he explained.

Newtown Congregational Church Pastor and NIC Coordinator Matthew Crebbin explained part of the planning that went into the evening’s presentation.

“It was a challenge for us to ponder after a decade, as we began a new decade on this journey, how do we understand that I’m sure many of us here, perhaps, who were here in the earliest days, thought, ‘Maybe there is a destination we will get to, sometime,’” Crebbin said.

Reminding attendees of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” Crebbin said he thinks that “more and more, as we have journeyed together as a community, and as an interfaith council, we have realized that really the journey is not so much about finding a place that we will ever get to but rather a way to integrate on that journey all that we have experienced — our continued grief, and sorrow, and trauma, but also our celebration and honoring of lives shared with us and of new purposes found by many among us to find ways to make a difference in this community and in the wider world, a way for us to find wisdom, both from our faith communities and our faith teachings, but also wisdom that comes to us from our experiences, a way for us to grow in compassion, in love, in hope, in joy.

“Indeed, we are not so much looking for a destination as we are looking for a way to continue to be on this journey together,” Crebbin continued. “As we welcome you tonight, our theme for this evening is a recognition that what is needed on every journey is companions, and companionship.”

The season of Advent, he said, reminds people that it is a time to remember “the one who comes and says ‘I am here with you.’ Thus on this night we want to have all of us as we are able, to ponder those companions who have helped us on our journeys thus far, and to recognize how we can continue to be companions to one another in the days and weeks and months and years ahead.

“For that is what we will need. We will need to be with one another, to assist one another, to continue to have patience with one another, to show compassion and love,” Crebbin said. On Thursday evening, he said, “especially as we know how violence has torn apart our own community, we are mindful of all the places in our wider world where violence breaks the hearts of God’s people.”

It is imperative, he said, for people to find ways to be companions to one another. He encouraged attendees to ponder how they could, in faith or without, continue a journey of companionship that has sustained them thus far, while continuing to “support and encourage one another, on the journey ahead, even as we remember and honor and treasure those who have been lost to us.”

While Crebbin referred to those killed on 12/14 during his remarks, the names of each woman and child who died that morning were read later.

Crebbin’s younger daughter Leah read the 26 names of the deceased, pausing while Castner Wyatt rang a small bell after each name.

Reflections were shared by Grandmother Nancy Andry, a Native American healer; Rev Bill Donaldson, founder and president of Love Has A Home Here; Dr John Woodall, of the Baha’i faith; Reverend Leo McIlrath, chaplain at The Lutheran Home in Southbury; and Congregation Adath Israel member Steve Bamberg.

Before he offered a Prayer For Companionship, the new pastor of Newtown United Methodist Church begged for patience and forgiveness.

“I feel almost inadequate to be here,” Stephen Volpe said. “I’ve only been here in Newtown a little more than five months.”

Having not been in Newtown 11 years ago, “and having not so pungently experienced the horror, I just pray that my words, whatever I have to say, resonate with you adequately enough.

“I want you to know that despite my distance,” he added, “I think myself and so much of the world felt so close to you in our thoughts, in our tears, and in the many, many, many prayers that have been said since that tragic day.”

Castner Wyatt then invited those in the pews to join her in lighting the candles in the front of the room. Shen again played his violin while table candles were lit.

Approximately 40 people attended. In addition to the NIC members, most guests went forward to light a votive. Some opted to carry handheld candles back to their seats.

Castner Wyatt had suggested holding the lit candles during the closing blessing, offered by former Congregation Adath Israel Rabbi Dr Shaul Praver.

“It is an honor to be here. We’ve been together on this journey for a long time now,” Praver said of his interfaith council colleagues. While the interfaith leaders knew each other and worked well together before 12/14, he said, “that day put us together and started us on a journey we never could have imagined.”

Praver, who now serves as a Senior Fellow at the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute in Washington, D.C., said his heart “will always be here, on this day and throughout the year.”

All hearts, he said, “need to be like the soil, to receive the presence of God, the presence of this holy seed that is around us.”

Referencing the story of Joseph and his 11 brothers, Praver asked those in the pews to hold up their candles, “like the 11 stars in Joseph’s dream. These were his brothers, and he had this dream that they embraced him, they loved him. Aren’t we all like that? Wanting to be in a place of love, to be embraced.”

Continuing, he said, “We have been shattered, we have been torn asunder. Our image of what we thought would be, was shattered, but so are many things — they are shattered before they take on a greater form.”

Like Volpe a few minutes earlier, Praver asked for those with him to bear with him while he continued.

“Sometimes destruction is in appearance alone, and out of the destruction is beyond our understanding to grasp, that it comes out something greater and not the way we wanted, not the way we prayed,” he said. “Our image of God changes. We mature, and we learn, and we grow.”

He then chanted the 13 Attributes of Mercy found in the book of Exodus (Ch 34:6-7). They were the words, he said, the House of Israel chanted to receive not just God’s forgiveness, “but the connection again, to be brought in again to a place of safety and grace.

“I think that’s what we all want: to be embraced, with that spirit.”

Praver closed by saying that while all may not be able to understand everything, “we trust we will at least find a path forward in which we can walk together in the peace … and let us, here in Newtown, not be The Town any longer, of the tragedy.

“Let us be the light in the world. Let us be a bridge to a new and kinder world and maybe, just maybe, that’s what we’ve been asked to do.”

=====

Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.