Juxtaposition

 Last Friday night, the lovely Madelyn Simone took her father to her school’s Girls Gala. This annual event brings together girls and their dads or other family escorts for an evening of dancing (think “Baby Shark”) and elementary school socializing. With a touch of lipstick and lots of photos, nine-year-old Madelyn and her dad enjoyed an evening together that will hold a special place in her childhood memory bank.

Just a few miles away, there was another gathering on Friday, where memory was all a grieving family could cling to. On that night, more than two hundred people came to the Southeast Community Center in Canton to stand together, to keep vigil for Sylvia. Sylvia McGee was fourteen years old. Sylvia McGee was in middle school. And Sylvia McGee was killed, shot in the head, her body discovered in a Canton alley by a friend of ours walking his dog. 

Those two images, one of a life-filled dancing child and the other of a child robbed of life, have been competing for space in my thoughts in recent days. Juxtaposition is when two things are seen or placed close together with contrasting effect. Sometimes juxtaposition is used as a literary device, to draw a marked contrast between one character or another, to create suspense, or to achieve a rhetorical effect. Remember Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities”? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . . it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

This weekend, we’re celebrating an anniversary. It’s been ten years since The Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center opened its doors wide to Ashland. Reflecting on those years, I see over and over again this same sense of juxtaposition, of contrast, of the season of Light and the season of Darkness. 

In the past ten years, there have been plenty of moments filled with joy at 527 East Liberty Street in Ashland. The music. The laughter. The daffodils. The weddings. The squeals of the little ones at the spraypark. The winding path of the labyrinth. The rejoicing of the angels in heaven as “a new name [is] written down in glory!” 

Juxtaposed against the joy were the times of profound sorrow and loss. The sudden death of our architect, Bernie Zofcin, who never got to see the completed facility. The specter of domestic violence that ended Billie Jo’s life. The presence of a serial killer. A shaken baby. An estranged family. A loss of sobriety.  

Is it possible to reconcile these times of such jarring conflict, between life and death, growth and destruction, sorrow and joy? One incident at the Kroc comes to mind that symbolizes this possibility for me. One night, an employee had a medical issue as he drove into work, and he literally “drove into work,” his truck plowing into the social service wing of the new facility. We were grateful there was no serious injury to the driver or others, and heart-sick over the damage to the building. Now what? 

One by one that night, the people gathered. Employees, church members, neighbors; all came to wait, to work, to pray, and to be together, in this place that hadn’t even existed a year before. Now, we had become community. As Jean Vanier recognizes, “One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.”

When I struggle to see light in darkness, in the juxtaposition of life and death, Vanier’s words remind me that we can live each day in community, “with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets.” As we lament, as we rejoice, as we reach for each other in community.