KITSAP INTERFAITH NETWORK

Moment of Blessing

 

 

Text Box: ILLAHEE — Going over to Paymela Faye Long’s home was a bit like entering a curiosity shop, her family says. Inside, one would find trinkets and small treasures of a lifelong explorer. The 58-year-old also enjoyed cooking in cast iron, and often times would make dinners — oysters and wild mushrooms were a favorite — that were accompanied by handwritten menus. “Everything with her was an adventure,” said her daughter, Myle Garcia. Amid the burned rubble of the mobile home where she is believed to have been killed in late October, there isn’t much left of what her family says was a vibrant life. On Wednesday, a “Moment of Blessing” gave Long’s family and friends a chance to reminisce about a woman who they say “took you at face value” and accepted people for who they were. The Kitsap Interfaith Network, a group of local religious leaders, has conducted numerous such moments of blessing at sites of horrific crimes. They do so as a way to “reclaim” the land where crimes happened. “That which was taken from us by violence and death we reclaim as a place of life, healing, beloved community and hope,” the network noted in a small pamphlet distributed at the ceremony. Retired pastor George Larson prayed at the blessing “that in our anger we find forgiveness, that in our sorrow we may find hope, that in death we may find new life.” Long’s family appreciated of the gesture, which included prayers, singing and a walk around the perimeter of the mobile home’s remains. “Closure will never come without justice,” Garcia said. “But it makes me feel better.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Scene of Homicide, Family Prays for Peace and Justice

By Josh Farley

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Kitsap Sun