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04/21/93
Church service begins healing process for Waco area
By Nancy Kruh / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-The church service lasted only 30 minutes-about all the time the fire needed to destroy the Branch Davidian compound.
But in that half-hour Tuesday, Waco began its long process of healing the wound that David Koresh left on this city.
About 100 worshipers-including Gov. Ann Richards-came together for a personal moment, this "service of prayer and lament,' held at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Waco.
"We need our feelings helped-you just don't know what to do,' explained Louise Herbert, an Epis-copalian who took an early seat for the 12:15 p.m. service.
George and Trish Holland, the husband and wife who pastor the church, had volunteered the 70-year-old sanctuary for the hastily called ecumenical gathering.
On Monday night, Mr. Holland spoke to "four or five reporters' to get the word out. He was surprised that the open invitation brought just as many members of the media to observe as there were townspeople to worship.
Throughout the service, the sounds of the reporters and photographers-shutters clicking, pens on paper-mingled with the sounds of worship-the soothing organ, the murmured prayers.
"The purpose,' Mr. Holland said at the start of the service, "is to give each of us an opportunity to lift up our pain and our shock and our hurt to almighty God.'
And there was pain, shock, hurt-all written across the faces of the congregation.
Just as authorities Tuesday began poring over the charred rubble, looking for answers to their investigation, so these Waco people searched for their own answers.
Why did this spiritual aberration happen just a few miles from their home of spiritual tradition? Why did the ordeal end this way? And why, most of all, why the children?
"O God, the children-we weep for the children,' began Jo Pendleton, the local director of the private housing program Habitat for Humanity.
A member of the Waco Ministerial Alliance that sponsored the service, Ms. Pendleton wrote and delivered "A Mother's Lament' in memory of the 17 children presumed dead at the compound.
"We lay before you our outrage, our terrible sadness, our fears about our own children,' Ms. Pendleton said, "and we thank you for the healing and grace of tears.'
As she spoke the words, tears rimmed the eyes of many of the congregants. Later, Ms. Richards said she, too, was most struck by the lamentation.
"It was particularly appropriate,' she said. "First and foremost, we must remember our children.'
Ms. Richards grew up in Waco and has many family friends there.
"She made it clear,' said Mr. Holland, that she was there as a participant, and not a leader, of the service.
During the service she sat in the amber glow of one of the church's two massive stained-glass windows, which depict five scenes from Jesus' life, and one parable-the lost lamb.
Ms. Pendleton's presentation came halfway into the service-after a rabbi had read the 36th Psalm, expressing the spiritual extremes of human wickedness and divine goodness; after a Baptist preacher had implored God to "heal our city, our state, our country'; and just before Waco Mayor Bob Sheehy implored residents to find some meaning in the senselessness.
"After our mourning is over, I pray that we can come together as a community and become more concerned with each other,' the mayor said, "and see that nothing like this happens again.'
Once the congregants had risen to recite the 23rd Psalm-"The Lord is my shepherd . . . '-Ms. Holland then charged them to "have courage' and "hold fast to what is good.'
Silently, the crowd filtered out through the church's dark doors and into the light of the spring day.
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