The tolling of the bell this evening drove home the magnitude of the massacre.
Forty-nine times, the Orient Congregational Church bell rang out this evening, sorrowfully marking the deaths of the 49 people shot dead in an Orlando nightclub Sunday.
And so the prayer service in Orient drew to a close, finishing with the 40 people in attendance forming a circle outside the Main Road church and singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
The outdoor service on the front lawn of the the church was organized and led by its pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ann Van Cleef.
Van Cleef played selections on her flute and led the residents, each of whom wore a rainbow-colored ribbon distributed by the church, in song and prayer.
“We must never forget that love is stronger than hate, hope is stronger than fear and when one suffers we all feel the pain,” Van Cleef told the congregants.
“When many of us were growing up, they were shooting our leaders,” Van Cleef recalled. “Remember John F. Kennedy? Martin Luther King? Robert Kennedy? And then it stopped for a while and we were glad.
But when it started agin it wasn’t individuals it was groups.”
Rabbi Gadi Capela of Congregation Tifereth Israelin Greenport joined in the service, singing a Hebrew version of Psalm 23.
Photo: Denise Civiletti
“To think of what kind of darkness a person has to find himself in to do such a thing,” Capela said, “to go into a place, just close the door and then change the magazine three times.
“It wasn’t just an act of hate, it was self-hate… It comes from such darkness it’s hard for us to comprehend,” he said.
“What we have to do as clergy is to make sure, when we know people who live in the dark, to try and give them hope,” the rabbi said.
As Van Cleef played a musical offering, the people in attendance lit candles. When the flute stopped, the mournful tolling began. They stood in silence as the bell rang slowly, once for each of the 49 victims gunned down in the Orlando nightclub. The tolling bell even seemed to quiet the traffic on the busy Main Road, almost magically slowing the pace of vehicles passing by — and the noise from their traffic — for the first time during the 40-plus minutes of the service.
“Pray for the victims. Pray for their families. Pray for people who live in fear that this could possibly happen to them. Pray for our country. And pray that we never have to gather again like this, for this reason,” Van Cleef told the group.
They gathered around her in a circle and sang out together:
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony…
“And now friends,” Van Cleef concluded, “go out into the world, rendering no one evil for evil. Season the world with kindness. Brighten those dark corners with hope. Kindle joy in the hearts of everyone you encounter. And may God’s love forever strengthen you to be ambassadors of peace to the world.”
SoutholdLOCAL gallery by Courtney Blasl
