“If you have time, go to mcc.org. I don’t know what took me there last week but I saw that they don’t have enough relief kits to ship. Last time we ended up with 1,100 boxes and I hope we can beat that this time. People want to do something about the war and this project seems to take on a life of its own.” This was an email I received from Mary Ahler(right) in April. Mary, the mother of two, a son and daughter, and a grandmother of three, began attending SJA 23 years ago. She can be seen, busily working each Sunday changing the bulletin boards at church, just one of her many volunteer jobs.

Mary organized the Iraq Relief Project for St Joan’s in March 2003. It is sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee. I helped out by photographing and writing a story about the project. I was in Maui when Mary contacted me with this email and asking me to write a follow up story. Thoughts jumped around in my mind as a “theme” for my story. Several days before the email I had gone to see the Dalai Lama. I was overflowing with his energy and words, ‘an affirmation…..to respect others’. Motivated and feeling high on life, I felt this was an easy way for people to help out with the war and ‘respect others’.

My thoughts went back to the Dalai Lama and as a Tibetan Buddhist, of course, his basic philosophy is nonviolence. When 9/11 occurred, he immediately wrote a long letter to President Bush in which he expressed his deep regrets and offered prayers for people who had lost their lives. But also he said the solution would not be in violent reprisals. Violence would bring more violence. The Dalai Lama has this lovely sense of humor and giggles a lot. His simplicity is amazing and contagious. Although political realities have beset his homeland and a climate of violence sometimes seems to pervade the world, the Dalai Lama has been a constant and steadfast proponent of peace. His homeland, Tibet, long has been under the control of the government of China, which has systematically worked to eliminate Tibetan cultural heritage while driving its people into exile. But the Dalai Lama holds out hope for a peaceful resolution of that situation, too. Can we hope for a peaceful resolution with our war?

Peace, simplicity, hope, and excitement filled my thoughts for the project as I arrived in town. Our family jumped into action with purchasing items and making up boxes.

Relief kits were collected for three consecutive Sundays. Mary decorated a box, to use as a sign, placed it on top of a car, marking the collection area. Mary’s helpers, her family and friends, plus Mary stood out in cool, windy, rainy weather to gather the boxes and fill different cars to then move to multiple garages until transport time. The boxes will be trucked to South Dakota and on to Akron, PA with others that have been collected. In Pennsylvania the kits items are then packed into 5-gallon plastic buckets with lids, purchased by MCC. Experience has shown that relief kit buckets are useful long after contents are gone. People use them for carrying water, storing grain, pickling vegetables and, at the end of the day, as pieces of furniture! Once 2300 kits have been collected, a 40 foot ocean cargo container is brought to the warehouse and loaded by volunteers, filling it to the brim. The container is then taken to a pier in Baltimore or New York. The container is transferred onto an ocean cargo ship, some of which carry up to 2000 containers at one time. Eventually they will reach Iraq.

Despite the weather at collection time, the atmosphere is upbeat. The whole gang is appreciative to receive your box or boxes, giving exclamations of joy with plenty of laughter thrown into the conversation. Mary offers a smile, thank you and friendly chit chat. She is an amazing woman. On one Sunday, a police car drove through the parking lot and was coming directly at them, when everyone broke into giggles about had the police come to shut them down. As he drove by, he waved vigorously at a very smiling crew!

The end result was disappointing with less than 300 kits collected. The money donations were up. It cost $40 to send 10 boxes, meaning the $2600 collected will send 650 boxes to Iraq, or ¼ of one container, if my math is correct. Not bad!

Why such a small turnout? Mary said she thought some of it was the time of year, April and May versus March and April of 2003. Schools were not interested as it was close to the end of the school year!! Why were others not as willing? Why didn’t the project take on a life of its own? Why? Why?

Have we truly become complacent about this war?

Buddhist or Christian, we should all remember: