A Search For Peace And Hospitality Will Guide May Friendship Day

By Shannon Hicks

Kathleen Chesto seems to find some of her strength, belief, and guidance from a favorite quote of Helen Keller. “I am only one, but still I am one. I will not refuse to do something I can do,” spoken by Keller, is the quotation selected to greet visitors to Dr Chesto’s homepage, whether visitors are looking for information about Dr Chesto the public speaker and author, or Dr Chesto the creator of the Seven For Peace Project.

That latter project will be highlighted during Dr Chesto’s address for Church Women United-Newtown unit next month. The Southbury resident has been invited to keynote during CWU’s May Friendship Day celebration, which will have as its theme “God’s Wisdom Inspires Hospitality… The Heart of Hospitality.” She will talk about how to use hospitality and other concepts to bring about peace in the world.

May Friendship Day is an annual event celebrated across the country. The Newtown unit of Church Women United will host its May Friendship Day celebration Saturday, May 3, beginning at 9 am, at C.H. Booth Library. All are invited.

The morning will begin with a continental breakfast and fellowship before the service begins. The library’s lower entrances will be unlocked so that CWU attendees can get into the building, which regularly does not open on Saturdays until 9:30. Attendees should plan on using the back parking lot at 25 Main Street.

There is no charge, although attendees should note that there will be a Fellowship of the Least Coin offering (bring pennies) and a general offering received during the celebration, which will include music, prayers, and discussion in addition to Dr Chesto’s presentation.

Dr Chesto is a wife, mother, and grandmother, a storyteller who gives parish missions and addresses catechetical conventions across the United States and Canada.

She holds a doctorate in ministry from Hartford Seminary and a master’s in religious studies from St Joseph College. Dr Chesto is the author of numerous books, articles, and videos on spirituality and family life. She is the recipient of an Emmaus Award for Excellence in Catechesis, an NACFLM (National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers) Award for Outstanding Service to Family Life, a Hartford Seminary Distinguished Alumna Award, and a National Catholic Press Award for Educational Materials.

She is also the winner of a Christopher Award for her 1990 book, Risking Hope, began as a journal at midnight while in intensive care after being admitted to the hospital unable to breath on her own in a multiple sclerosis exacerbation.

Seven For Peace

If Dr Chesto’s name seems familiar, it may be because this will not be her first visit recently to Newtown. She was, in fact, one of the guest speakers just last month during Parent University at Reed Intermediate School, the daylong seminar for parents of all ages and interests presented by The Parent Connection.

The award-winning author, mother, grandmother, and family educator offered a program called “Raising Kids Who Care,” based on her book of the same title. The presentation offered guidance for easing the overwhelming task of helping children grow ethically in an amoral world; and also how to teach children to care about themselves, the world, and those they encounter each day.

Last year Dr Chesto launched a peace project she called Seven For Peace. The idea came about after the woman of faith felt the world was becoming too hard, everyone was too angry, and everything bad was only escalating, especially the war on terror.

“I felt we were reaching a point where all our discussions on peace weren’t discussions any more. They were arguments, and they were hateful. We were attacking each other,” she said. “People are so much more opposed to us being in Iraq. Back in June, you couldn’t even hold a discussion about where you stand without people going for your throat.”

What began forming in her mind was a wish for peace through planned silence.

“I thought, how about standing in silence, honoring our debt, paying honor to those who have died, on both sides [of the war]?” she said. “Just send out some good, positive peaceful energy into our crazy world, instead of all the crazy conversations.”

Dr Chesto began asking people of all ages and faiths to give up seven minutes of their day for seven months. To light a candle and stand in silence.

“It was interesting how quickly it spread,” Dr Chesto shared Monday afternoon. “I heard from people in Peru, Chile, India… people who were committed, from July 7 to January 7, to do this. Seven months of seven minutes each evening in silence. You didn’t have to do prayers or anything, just silence.”

While the initial running of Seven For Peace has concluded, the project continues in a new form. Participants now find one day each month to commit to seven minutes of silence.

“We’re still observing [Seven For Peace] on the seventh of each month. My granddaughter reminds me, and asks me constantly about making time for peace. She is aware that there is a day of the month that we stop and think.

“It’s just something that keeps us aware, that’s all.

“It’s interesting,” she continued. “The conversation has changed so much since July. People will talk with each other, and listen to each other, better than they were last year.”

While she will not necessarily be trying to get more people to practice Seven For Peace next month, Dr Chesto will certainly discuss the project and its results when she addresses May Friendship Day attendees in Newtown.

“The theme of hospitality, the theme of hospitality with God, which Church Women United has selected, is really what this project has been all about,” Dr Chesto said this week. “That hospitality for one another, to be open and hospitable to each other. It’s that inhospitableness that leads to calling each other the infidel, that leads to wanting to destroy the other. I will probably focus on how their theme has given me insight into what I was trying to do.”

Dr Chesto was on the minds of the women planning the local celebration because of her peace initiative.

“We wanted to invite her to the next celebration and as it turned out it was about hospitality,” said CWU-Newtown unit Celebration Chairperson Linda Manganaro. “And as [fellow CWU-Newtown member] Jeane Roberts says, you can’t expect peace without first being hospitable to one another. Therefore we extended our program [from its original theme of] ‘God’s Wisdom Inspires Hospitality’ to add ‘The Heart of Peace’ [to our program’s theme].”

Similarly, the idea of the program for CWU May Friendship Day 2008 came from a question of how women interact at all levels of Church Women United in being hospitable.

“Do we welcome individuals who are ‘different’ from us? Those who are another race, different age, denomination, or lifestyle. Or do we seen to be exclusive and keep our local units the same as they have been for years?” Mrs Manganaro challenged her fellow CWU-Newtown members recently. “Do we welcome individuals with different ideas or do we maintain things as they have always been?”

The underlying scripture passage on which the program is based is Matthew 25:35, 40 (“I was a stranger and you welcomed me … Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”)

May Friendship Day

In addition to Dr Chesto’s talk, the May 3 service will invite attendees to look at hospitality in three focus areas: “In Your Home,” “In Your Community,” and “Sharing Your Skills, Knowledge and Talents.” The program will deviate from previous CWU presentations in that participants will be divided into three groups for 15 minutes so that they may discuss one these topics.

“Women are, by nature, deeply interested in spirituality,” said Dr Chesto.

“I love talking to groups of women. That’s probably my favorite group, because they’re so open. Women are, by nature, deeply interested in spirituality,” she continued, adding that while she will not be moderating the group discussions, she does plan to bring suggestions should the groups find themselves stymied.

“I’m just bringing a couple of different ideas so that if people feel stumped when they want to discuss, they’ll have some direction,” she said.

Through sharing scriptures and discussion, attendees will be called to a deeper understanding of what it truly means to provide hospitality. The sharing will be brief, with time scheduled for each group to report their findings, with the hope that participants will take the service back to their own churches to continue the discussions.

For additional information call Darlene Jackson at 426-5192 or Linda Manganaro, 426-3496. Reservations are not necessary for May Friendship Day.