The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
CLEAN UP YOUR ACT
Sixteen people attended the event at Kanisa House in Elyria
The First Community Interfaith Institute of Ohio was a home of fine music with a message on March 25.
They presented their third program in a series called A Capella Solos/Vocal Expressions entitled, “Clean Up Your Act,” featuring AKA Diamond Rosebud and Artists of the Passion for Living Production Company for an audience of 16 people at Kanisa House II at 142 Cleveland Street in Elyria.
A poem, written by Minister Gerald J. Evans, was read at the beginning of the production. The single page of block text, entitled “Clean Up Your Act,” extols the reader to clean up their act by coming closer to God.
It features seemingly random phrases that are
“We help people, feed the poor and work with the poor and do anger management.”
— Minister Gerald J. Evans of First Community Interfaith Institute of Ohio in Elyria
underlined. These underlines began to make sense as the singing began. Each phrase was the title of a song that was sung or a piece of writing that was read as part of the program.
After the songs and poems
were read, T. Douglas Grayson read excerpts from Nobel Prize-winning author and former Lorain resident Toni Morrison’s book “Remember: The Journey to School Integration” and drew a parallel between the fear white and black students felt when public schools were desegregated to the fear students feel now with the recent rash
of school shootings.
He said he hopes that fear may help to bring the students together.
“It’s really something, we see what’s happening today where a common problem in education that the students are facing today with the threat of school being a place where people thought they were safe, now I’m sure people are scared to go to
school and don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “That’s kind of a bonding force to cause students of all colors to come together.”
He said he spent March 24 watching the March for Our Lives in Washington DC and thought that march might prove to be as much of a historically significant event as Martin Luther
King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963.
Evans said getting the community involved is very important to the First Community Interfaith Institute of Ohio. He said they try to get people to participate.
He shared something he had been thinking about for two weeks prior to the event. A previous program in the series had focused
on education and Evans wanted to emphasize what the institute does.
“I’m not a leader of this community,” he said. “I’m just a working person at the First Community Interfaith Institute trying to make (the institute) all it can do. We help people, feed the poor and work with the poor and do anger management.”