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 REACHING PEACE FOR YOUTH AND CITIES |
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TRAVELOGUE - LARAMIE L.A., Laramie Episcopalians Join Hands in
Healing |
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(Laramie, Wyo.,
April 24, 2002) – Offering prayers this morning near the site where
college student Matthew Shepard was left to die, Los Angeles Episcopalians
continued an exchange with a local priest as part of the Hands in Healing
cross-country itinerary designed to counter hate crimes, domestic violence,
and other forms of abuse. The prayers this morning followed a liturgy supplied to the group by Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd and written by the Rev. Nancy Wilson of the Metropolitan Community Church. “Caw, caw, caw,” began the service in the morning inside the Sherman Hill Estates, the residential development within which Shepard was left after being brutally attacked. The Travelers visited the site, recalling that Shepard was found after sunrise and then taken to a Fort Collins hospital. The liturgy combined the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” and a poem of three crows in the night. |
| The evening before, the Travelers met with the Rev. Robin Chance and Stephan Hassheider, a parishioner of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Laramie, who knew Shepard. Hassheider told the story from the time that he heard the first news report on the radio to the time the trials ended nearly a year after the murder. | |
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“Coincidently, the
attack occurred [in October, 1998] during the Gay Awareness Week at the
university,” said Hassheider, former faculty advisor to the
gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender group on campus. He said that he had a lot
of anger and pain as a result of the attack. Luis Garibay, a Traveler from the congregation at St. Athenasius, at the Cathedral Center, shared his story of finding his brother shot and how he became so angry he wanted to kill. Garibay told Hassheider that he had healed a lot since his brother’s death and that the Church had played a crucial role in that healing. Garibay reminded Hassheider that the Travelers were in Laramie to start the process of healing. After a small Eucharistic service, the Travelers along with Hassheider went on to just outside Sherman Hill Estates. At the site, the Travelers said a brief prayer around a candle recalling Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion. The evening became a vigil until the morning. “It was eerie,” said Joel Vanderveen, a Traveler from St. Stephen’s, Hollywood. “It was cold, but beautiful. The sky was clear and the lights of the city were twinkling in the distance. It was easy to see what Matthew saw that night.” Hate crimes based on sexual orientation are second only to violence against African Americans and tend to be more violent. The murder and subsequent trial of Shepard’s attackers brought acute national attention to hate crimes, especially those based on sexual orientation. The group will proceed on to Omaha, Nebraska, where they will be greeted in Trinity Cathedral. The Travelers left Los Angeles on April 19 and their first stop was Las Vegas and will continue on to Omaha, Chicago, and Detroit in the coming weeks. |
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Return to Itinerary Previous Stop - Las Vegas/St. George Next stop - Omaha Hands In Healing Home Page |
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