The Positive Voices

On June 3rd, the City of Grand Rapids pocket park on the corner of Division Avenue and Cherry Street was dedicated by Mayor George Heartwell and community members as Pekich Park in honor of the late Reverend Barbara Pekich longtime pastor and leader of Heartside Ministry. Since the beginning of time in every culture, naming ceremonies have been distinctive events conferring a type of unique power or mission on individuals and places. Words matter and words have power. Words can wound and they can heal. Inspire or depress. Names and words possess influence and authority and most importantly reveal the feelings and intentions of those doing the naming. For over two decades Pastor Barb Pekich lovingly tended the members of her flock she referred to as the neighbors of Heartside, neighbors not clients. Barb knew how to treat people with dignity and bless them with a gift of belonging, of community and family, a real sense of place. While many see the homeless and hurting as statistical problems in need of solutions, Barb understood her Heartside Neighbors were reflections of Christ and she witnessed to them with His unconditional love. Barb knew the power of words and naming! She personified the mission of Heartside Ministry-“Sharing faith, hope and life amidst homelessness and poverty… transforming our community.” I had the privilege of serving with Barb at Heartside Ministry. When I first arrived she told me the neighbors would enrich me and I would receive and learn more from them than they ever would from me. As in many things, Barb was right. Starting at Heartside in 2000 after a couple decades of government service was certainly a change for me, but the fit was comfortable and felt very familiar. The spirituality of the neighbors and staff of Heartside was welcoming, loving, and challenging. As Barb predicted, they allowed me to witness the redemptive power of unconditional love. Most importantly however they challenged me to truly live a life of actual faith. Trusting God will provide somehow. Hoping against hope, this time a problem will finally be solved. Sharing, caring, forgiving, suffering, laughing, crying – living every day as best you can, knowing somewhere there is a divine plan. Daily I was humbled by the neighbors who I was here to help, witnessing to me with a love that constantly shone through despite the terrible crosses they carried traveling their personal Via Dolorosas, a constant reminder the cross is the key to our salvation. At Heartside every day is Lent, yet every day is also Easter. I witnessed neighbors in the throes of their private Gethsemanes wrestling demons of despair or other mental health ailments. I saw them after they had been scourged by physical, sexual or verbal abuse. I met people who had been rejected by so-called society, betrayed by friends, and undergoing daily crucifixions on crosses they built themselves or had been placed on by others. Still, after Calvary comes Easter. Stones are rolled away. People spring forth from tombs of addiction, abuse, or other forms of living death. Through God all things are possible and I saw Christ reflected in the diverse faces of our Heartside neighbors who joined Him in His passions and triumphs. I will always thank God and Barb Pekich for allowing me to join the neighbors on their many journeys and the privilege of serving in a ministry of love. I am a better person from being there. It’s not easy to run a non-profit especially in these challenging times, but Barb was an outstanding Executive Director and under her administration Heartside not only survived it flourished. She was a pleasure to work with and when the money ran out for positions, including my own, Barb’s genuine kindness and love softened the blow and we all put the well being of the neighbors first. A good shepherd is a pastor to all and that was Barb. My apologies if this refection on Barb is too personal. That is a danger when writing about one you knew and loved, yet she would understand. It shows why the City of Grand Rapids dedicated a park in her honor. Curiously the thing that I cherished most about Barb was her sense of humor manifested in her laughter. Most of the time she wore a kindly, large smile. At any possible excuse she would break into laughter. Her laugh was robust and contagious filling a room with a clap of thunderous joy. It was definitely one of her gifts from God and Holy Spirit was present in it. I believe laughter can be as powerful and as sacred as words. Speaking of words, the invitation from Heartside Ministry to the park dedication spoke of their power. “Please join us on Thursday, June 3rd, 5:00 pm at Division and Cherry to help honor Barb’s life and work with the dedication of the Pocket Park in her name. It is a wonderful honor for a wonderful woman whose heart has been indelibly imprinted upon the Heartside Neighborhood during 20 years of devotion and service.” Indelibly is an incredibly strong word but fitted the occasion beautifully. It means something that cannot be removed, washed away, or erased and that certainly describes the essence of Barb Pekich! As her successor the Reverend Char Ellison put it speaking about Pekich Park, “May Barb’s spirit be felt vividly in all who linger there.” I am sure it will! A park should be a place of relaxation and refuge. In an urban setting it ought to be a sanctuary of tranquility. This was what Barb provided within her ministry while she lived and now this Park filled with her joyous spirit will continue to bless her beloved neighbors. I imagine myself and others visiting Pekich Park with a wind blowing gently through it and catching the sound of laughter and remembering Barb. As I said before I believe laughter can be as powerful as words and to prove it I will end with an author Barb enjoyed for his Father Brown detective stories. Gilbert Keith Chesterton in his epic work Orthodoxy described the power of laughter more eloquently than I ever could: “We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear… The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” After reading this, He and Barb are probably having a good laugh. Listen closely and you will hear it echoing throughout Pekich Park.