BEAN BLOSSOM — As the sun set and the air grew cooler, love filled the atmosphere outside St. David’s Episcopal Church.

Strangers, neighbors and parishioners lined up to take a turn at scrubbing hate messages off the church’s walls.

“There are a ton of you and only three acts of graffiti,” Rev. Kelsey Hutto said, as laughter erupted from the group of at least 150 people Nov. 30.

“We really do believe this is going to be cathartic, and it’s going to give you the opportunity to remember that these symbols of hate do not have power over you and we can remove them,” Hutto said.

Laura Wenzler was one of the first people in line.

“It helps that process of healing and reconciliation,” she said. “I think it’s really wonderful that there’s so many people here to participate in it all together.”

Wenzler and her husband live in Columbus, but attend St. David’s during the summer when they stay at their cottage in Brown County. They were shocked and saddened to learn of the vandalism that happened Sunday, Nov. 13.

The congregation arrived to find a swastika, an anti-gay slur and “Heil Trump” spray-painted on the building.

“We have friends who teach in the schools in Columbus, and post-election, (we) heard a lot about some of the rhetoric that was pervasive there, too,” she said.

“It was shock and then sadness, too, that people feel the need to act on their anger that way.”

Sandy Higgins was driving her 5-year-old grandson, Trey Fowler, home when they passed by the church and saw everyone gathered outside. Fowler wanted his grandma to stop the car, “because I wanted to see what happened on the walls. I seen bad writing. It made me feel sad because no one should ever draw on a church,” he said.

Fowler took a turn at scrubbing.

“It made me feel very proud. That’s why I wanted to stop because I knew what he wanted to do and that he understood that it was a bad thing, so I wanted him to follow through,” Higgins said.

Local artist Sidney Bolam, with her children, Theo and Violet King, hung 22 small hearts carved into Brown County stone in the bushes outside the church.

Each carried a tags that read, “Please take this and let it inspire you to spread kindness.”

“It just makes you sick,” Bolam said of the vandalism. “We don’t attend, but there’s been times where I’ve stopped in the parking lot to meet family or pick up my nephew to babysit. We think of it as a safe, neighborly place.”

Bolam comes to sites of vandalism to hang her free art. She also left a few small limestone carvings on the B Line Trail in Bloomington after it was vandalized with hate speech a few days before the St. David’s incident.

“(I) just try to do some random act of kindness to kind of counter people’s bad behavior,” she said.

St. David’s parishioner Yvonne Oliger has lived and worked in Brown County for at least 20 years. She said she was initially fearful after learning about the vandalism, but that soon was replaced with love as the community stepped up to help.

“They were only just words, but to see all of these people caring about what happened, that’s the love,” she said.

“This (the graffiti) isn’t Brown County, it really isn’t. This (the ceremony turnout) is Brown County.”

Jude Thill moved to Brown County seven months ago. “I don’t know this church at all, but I come to the farmer’s market here and it’s always been a very welcoming and very kind place with awesome people,” she said.

“I think this is incredible,” she said about the cleanup, “and it’s why I moved to this area because of the sense of community. It really kind of reaffirms my decision to move here.”

David DuMond and his wife attend Episcopal Church of All Saints in Indianapolis. They came to help because they wanted to “contribute to construction rather than destruction.”

“Parents, more mature people are always cleaning up after less mature people. It starts with toilet training, so whoever did this has been, in a certain way, insufficiently toilet trained,” he said.

Bloomington resident Miles Edward read about the vandalism on Facebook and reached out to the church to offer help.

“I feel like something like this is sort of a reflection on all of us. Obviously we didn’t all paint it on there, but how we respond to that, I think, is really important,” he said.

“I think it’s important for people to make it clear that this isn’t what we stand for or what we believe.”

Healing begins

It didn’t take long before the spray paint was gone.

Pressure washers were used to blast away the remaining paint after the scrubbing stopped. The sun began to set and everyone made their way inside for a worship service and chili supper.

“Anything threatening our unity has no place in the church,” Hutto said to the group.

“We commit ourselves to resisting anything that threatens our unity,” the people responded in unison.

The sanctuary was full. People stood in the doorways.

Hutto had printed out and posted around the church more than 300 messages of support that arrived from all over the country and the world.

Prayers for the country and for peace filled the church.

“This was everything that I imagined it would be,” Hutto said.

Leaving the graffiti up for several weeks before cleaning it off was a way to start a conversation in the community, she said.

“Without the conversation, there is no healing,” she said.

“Now that we’re in the midst of this conversation, it’s to remember that you’re supported and that your supporters greatly outnumber your detractors,” she said.

Hutto said the next step is channeling this energy to a community concert planned for 6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 18 at the Brown County High School auditorium. It will feature music focusing on healing, reconciliation and “conquering darkness with light.”

“This message is greater than St. David’s,” she said.

“We’ve got to be able to get the community to take hold, and that’s when the healing begins.

“When the community begins to believe that their neighbors truly are neighbors, and that you have more in common than you don’t, healing will happen.”