Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor staff.
Retired Episcopal Suffragan Bishop Jim Curry, co-founder of the nonprofit Swords into Plowshares, gives a blacksmithing demonstration in Winchester, Mass. The nonprofit’s goal is to get guns off the streets and make young people enthusiastic about peaceful projects.
In a Providence park, there’s a sculpture made from illegal handguns. It’s kind of a depressing pillar to failure, unless you look at it as the removal of guns from circulation. It’s ambiguous, which I guess art is supposed to be.
Here’s a story about an effort to turn young people away from the gun culture of the streets.
Troy Aidan Sambajon writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Retired Episcopal Suffragan Bishop Jim Curry ignites his propane forge in the courtyard of Parish of the Epiphany church. Slowly he heats the barrel of a dismantled rifle to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then starts hammering the red-hot metal on his anvil. In minutes, a piece of once-deadly weaponry transforms into a humble weeding tool.
“Bishop Curry then invites onlookers to try their own hand at making garden tools from firearm parts, using the forge that he takes with him to various communities in the Northeast region. With each strike of the hammer, participants mold a hopeful vision of a future without gun violence.
“Before the demonstration, Bishop Curry gave a sermon explaining the mission of Swords to Plowshares (S2P) Northeast, a nonprofit that he co-founded a decade ago in New Haven, Connecticut. ‘At the forge, we hammer guns into gardening tools and art. We forge rings from shotgun barrels into hearts – symbolizing that the change we need begins in the transformation of our own hearts,’ he told parishioners.
“His work has inspired residents in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont to start their own independent S2P chapters, which host gun-surrender events in partnership with police departments. Law enforcement officials vet and dismantle the weapons, and then give the parts to the chapters for public blacksmithing demonstrations. Besides raising awareness about gun violence, the demonstrations help get young people interested in blacksmithing.
“Montrel Morrison, who runs a youth mentoring organization in Connecticut, calls S2P Northeast a ‘safe haven and beacon of hope.’ …
“Kam’eya Ingram, who spent the last two summers as a blacksmith with S2P Northeast, says that ‘when someone dies from gun violence, it’s like the world goes quiet.’ But for her, hammering on the anvil fills the silence with a resounding release of emotions. … ‘I feel like I’m bringing people peace – letting them know that one more gun is gone and that this [gun violence] might not happen to someone else.’
“Bishop Curry … studied religion at Amherst College. He graduated in 1970 and started his career working in public schools in Huntington, Massachusetts, as a middle and elementary schoolteacher for 10 years. Yet he longed to serve the spiritual needs of his community.
“That desire led him to the seminary in 1982, and, three years later, he was ordained as a deacon and priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. He focused his ministry as a spiritual adviser, working in hospitals with families in Connecticut and addressing the devastating impacts of gun violence and suicide. By 2000, he was elected suffragan bishop of Connecticut.
“His life ‘changed entirely,’ he says, in the wake of the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. … Newtown was in his diocese. …
“In early 2013, he joined other Episcopal bishops in Washington, D.C., and helped found Bishops United Against Gun Violence. Through that group, he learned about the Guns to Gardens movement, a network of nonprofits that repurposes unwanted firearms into garden tools and artwork. …
“In 2014, he co-founded his chapter, S2P Northeast, with Pina Violano, a trauma nurse and nursing professor at Quinnipiac University. The group’s namesake peacebuilding mission comes from the Old Testament (Isaiah 2:4): ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.’ …
“S2P Northeast has partnered with a Colorado organization called RAWtools on a nationwide gun-surrender program and, before the COVID-19 pandemic, taught blacksmithing skills to incarcerated people. …
“For Bishop Curry, ‘the real life of the forge’ has been to empower teens from New Haven through summer job opportunities. They are paid to transform guns through blacksmithing and help lead public demonstrations. …
“Jared Sanchez, age 18, takes pride in being a junior blacksmith instead of working a teenager’s typical mundane hustle. In a single day, he can make seven or eight garden tools out of shotgun barrels. He has also created a heart necklace for his younger sister and a cross to sit beside his grandfather’s urn. …
“After two summers serving as a blacksmith alongside Bishop Curry, Mr. Sanchez has come out of his shell and come into his own as a leader. Handling so many firearm parts has revealed to him the depth of the gun violence problem in his community and the work that must be done to combat it.”
More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Nice pictures.
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