wfn.org | Re: United Methodist Daily News note 3201

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3232 notes).

Note 3228 by UMNS on Oct. 15, 1996 at 15:47 Eastern (10409 characters).

[BTITLE:    Response to AIDS Quilt
SEARCH:   AIDS, quilt, memorial, Capitol, names
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Joretta Purdue                      514(10-28-71B){3228}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722           Oct. 15, 1996

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photos to accompany this story will follow.

United Methodists respond 
to AIDS memorial quilt, vigil

     WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- Many United Methodists who came to see
the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall here Oct. 11-13 spoke of the
experience in religious terms.
     Although there were thousands of people moving among the
panels that stretched from 3rd Street to 14th Street, they were
hushed and reverent. The names of the dead, who now number more
than 320,000, were intoned from five sound stages throughout the
three-day event.
     "A feeling of a great open sanctuary" was how it was
described by Kathy Porteus of Centerville, Mass., who attends
Osterville United Methodist Church on Cape Cod.
     Eleanor Strand, 79, Porteus' mother and a member of
Peterborough (N.H.) United Methodist Church, was one of the
readers, concluding with the name of her son, Mark Strand, who
died last year. 
     Both women worked together in one of several information
booths that helped viewers locate panels commemorating friends and
relatives.  
     Others of the 12,000 volunteers put out the 40,000 quilt
panels -- 45 tons of fabric -- each morning and carefully folded
and stored them each night, or they did other tasks associated
with the display of the quilt. 
     Mother and daughter sought out Mark Strand's panel, made by
another sister, Margit Jewett, also of Peterborough, who, Porteus
confided, called it "Mark's pew" when they saw it in the context
of the large quilt.
     "It's really affirming life," Porteus said of the quilt.
"Every panel draws you into that person's life."
     Her brother was a choreographer in Chicago, and in a United
Methodist Church here in Washington she and her mother were
reunited with some of his friends from Chicago.
     An attitude of complete acceptance of everyone prevailed
around the quilt and at the Saturday night candlelight vigil,
Porteus said.
     "It made no difference what people looked like ... [or]
whoever they were paired up with. It was just utter equality,"
Porteus observed. Grieving together and singing together at the
ceremony by the reflecting pool reinforced the sense of a common
link, she added.
     Porteus said she felt a strong sense of connectedness with
the people who were commemorated in the panels, with other
volunteers and with complete strangers who came to ask for
information. 
     Tom Russell, a member of Dumbarton United Methodist Church
here, expressed very similar sentiments after he had walked around
the quilt.
     "I overheard so many conversations, and I thought this is a
taste of what it's like when people gather together in peace to
share the essentials of life, to remember, to hope," Russell said.
"And that for me was a sense of joy in the midst of sadness."  
     Russell, a former United Methodist clergyman, said among the
panels he located that of Jay McCarty, who was a member of Kairos
United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Mo. Reading through the
messages from people at the church and remembering McCarty from
many United Methodist meetings, Russell recalled, "I just sat
there and cried."
     He said growing up in Ohio, he and many others had lived
separate from those of other ethnic backgrounds, economic strata
or sexual orientations. "But today on the Mall, here we were all
together -- literally from all over the country -- rich and poor,
black and white, gay and straight.
     "I believe that in the middle of all our divisive battles in
the church and society, God's love will eventually overcome all of
those divisions," Russell said, pointing to experience as one of
the ways John Wesley, Methodism's founder, said people of faith
learn and grow. 
     "Our experience and our reason are helping us to further
refine what we understand about God's love and the gospel of Jesus
Christ," he said.
     Porteus, her mother and Russell were among the approximately
60 people -- mostly United Methodists -- who attended a memorial
service Saturday afternoon at Foundry United Methodist Church, a
Reconciling Congregation.
     The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, senior pastor, in the sermon said
that AIDS causes people "to ask deep questions about God."  He
continued that some have said God has allowed AIDS to happen as
punishment for sin. But, he asked, where is God's justice when
children are stricken and people receive tainted blood
transfusions? "Even those whose AIDS may be a result of some
irresponsible behavior, [was it] worthy of capital punishment?" he
queried and criticized the harshness with which some groups have
reacted to those who have this disease.
     Christ, given on the cross by God for all, is a visible and
tangible expression of love and hope, Wogaman said.
     He stated that some of the most touching scenes he has seen
are of people who have reached out to care for people with AIDS.
In this kind of true devotion, he said, there is a foretaste and a
realization of the great outpouring of God's love.
     Marilyn DuFour, a lay member of Monroe Street United
Methodist Church in Toledo, Ohio, organized a group from the
church and community to spend the weekend learning about AIDS. 
     The group took part in Hands Around the Capitol, an
encircling of the Capitol by thousands of participants who joined
hands to form a loop approximately a mile in circumference.
     That evening the Ohio group made a candlelight march from the
Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial with tens of thousands of others.
     "It felt like a giant wave of hope," said Dufour. "Behind us
and ahead of us, there was nothing but light as far as you could
see."
     Rachel Vail, a sophomore at the University of Toledo and a
member of the Monroe Street church, found the procession amazing,
she said, and was particularly enthusiastic about doing the wave
with the candles in the procession.
     She was horrified that a band of about 20 protestors shouted
"Thank God for AIDS," "Quilt of shame," and other epithets as
marchers passed in front of the White House.
     DuFour said, "We had to remind each other that they had as
much right to be there as we did."
     Vail reported experiencing "a great sense of community,"
especially at the candlelight vigil by the reflecting pool
Saturday night.
     When a young girl who is HIV-positive recited a poem about
how happy she is, Vail was among the many who wept. Someone put a
comforting arm around her, and it was a minute or two before she
realized that it was not one of the group she was with, but a
stranger who reached out to give solace.
     On Sunday, Vail read the names of several people who had died
of AIDS, including her cousin, Craig Rosswurm.
     She said she was pleased to take part in this way of letting
people know how many have died of the disease and to honor her
cousin because he does not have a quilt panel yet. But the process
was not easy. "I tried to separate myself because I felt myself
getting upset before I went up there," she said.
     "This has just been an unbelievable experience!" Vail
declared about the whole weekend.
     Jim Wheatley of Beaufort, N.C., came to see the panel he had
made for his life partner who died in 1990. "This is particularly
memorable for me because this is the first time his panel has been
displayed as part of the quilt, so it was very moving," he said
softly.
     Wheatley, who for years was active in Foundry United
Methodist Church here, said he was first struck by the scope of
the huge tragedy the quilt symbolizes, "but on walking into the
quilt you're just overcome by the compassion, the love and the
sharing of intimacy that each panel represents."
     Likening the experience to "reading someone's very personal
diary," he said he was struck with the evidence of many young men
and women and the people who cared for them.
     Love and compassion were lavished on Wheatley and his partner
by the United Methodist Church in Milford, Pa., a tiny rural town,
where the partner lived through his last years. The members "all
took us in, loved us, cared for us, and there was no question that
the compassion and understanding was there," Wheatley said. 
     "My experience with that Methodist church has profoundly
influenced my life," and continues to do so, he added. It is
"really a truly loving church. It's full of the Holy Spirit."
     Greg Parker, a member of Foundry United Methodist Church, has
seen the quilt several times when it was displayed here in
previous years, but this time he was struck by "the vastness of
it." Looking down the Mall, it stretched as far as one could see,
he said. "The quilt was really overwhelming -- the size of it."
     Every time he sees it, he said, it reminds him of the impact
of AIDS far beyond his circle of friends "and makes it so much
more real."
     Parker termed the closing ceremony "very powerful." In it,
the quilt was folded away. He observed "how difficult it was for
people to see the panels folded, not knowing when they would see
them again. For the time that the quilt was here and the panel [of
their loved one] was there, that was a connection."
     For the three days that the quilt was on the Mall, SuAnne
Holmes, a staff member of the United Methodist Board of Church and
Society, assisted by other staff and volunteers offered materials
related the United Methodist Church's position and resources on
AIDS.
     Through unseasonably chilly mornings and hot stuffy middays
in the enclosed education tent, she reached out with materials
that the United Methodist churchwide agencies have prepared,
including reprints of the church's resolutions stating the
church's position and encouraging the observance of World AIDS
Day.
     After all events at the Mall had ended, an interfaith
memorial service was held Sunday evening in Washington National
Cathedral.  Dena Southerland, a United Methodist Board of Church
and Society staff member and AIDS activist, represented the United
Methodist AIDS Network in the opening processional.
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