Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
We Don't Create Visions, We Receive Them
On anxiety, visions, waiting on God, and Sharing the Bread
By Bishop Paul V. Marshall [Diocesan Life, April '98]
Anxiety is funny stuff. Among other things, it makes us do strange
things to shore up suspected or anticipated leaks. But let me back
up for a moment.
Just over two years ago, I "passed" the psychiatric exam necessary
to become a bishop. (Think about that for a moment.) Having lived
through four hours of interviewing, which left no area of my life
unexamined, I decided that I ought to get something out of the
ordeal. So I asked the psychiatrist if he had any advice to give
a new bishop.
"Almost nothing people will say will really be about you: don't
take anything personally." That has proven to be wise. His next
remark provoked the anxiety: "Just stay free to follow your own
vision."
Vision? By training, I was practicing a discipline that looked
mostly to the past. You don't go around having visions about 17-century
English liturgy, one of the areas of my specialization.
Anxiety provokes action. So I signed up for an executive training
seminar on visionary leadership. It was one of the most frustrating
things I've ever done. Everything was geared toward going inside
and generating a vision. None of the techniques was working for
me. I simply was not coming up with The Vision for Bethlehem.
I was soon tearing my hair out. With the rest of the group I had
done all the exercises. While some of them were coming up with
plans to pulverize their competition or sell their products, however,
I was empty. (I had even begun to snore during one of the guided
visualizations -- I am not making this up.) Finally, during my
evening prayer time, the words came. I don't know if they were
from within me or from God, "Hey, in the Church we don't create
visions, we wait to receive them." Oh.
Well, that made sense in an embarrassing sort of way. So I waited.
During the last session of the seminar, while others were constructing
their visions with techniques of "neuro-linguistic programming" that
I find otherwise quite useful, I did what I should have done in
the first anxious place: I waited on God.
The vision that came was and is surprising. There wasn't a lot
of detail about things I would do. There was instead an image.
It was a view of the future. There was no detail about it except
that it was golden and shone brightly. There was no sense of my
leading and people following. I was certainly in the center of
the front row, but I wasn't out front by myself. There was a much
stronger sense of our walking together into something new and God-pleasing.
It would never have occurred to me to share something so personal,
and slightly embarrassing, if someone had not asked me very directly
and publicly at the Parish Coordinators' meeting for the Sharing
the Bread festival about my "vision." The moment became one of
revelation for me. I finally understood what the powerful and slightly
disturbing vision I'd been given had to do with what had been working
in the diocese for the last 18 months.
My understanding of the challenges God presents us in northeast
Pennsylvania, combined with the call perceived by a few others
in the diocese, has grown and grown until there are now quite literally
hundreds of people working together on this great day of celebration
and witness. From the conception shared by a few people,
the nature and long-range purpose of the event have evolved in
a way that the village atheist would have to admit is miraculous.
The Festival, important as it is, is only the beginning of the
vision - not its end. I have come to realize that the Holy Spirit
is ready to lead us all into a future of witness and service that
will happen only if our response is corporate, with laity, clergy,
and bishop working together to follow God's call.
There is an invisible famine in our country, even in its best-fed
neighborhoods. Our friends, our neighbors, even some of our relatives,
are living random, unfulfilled, and even destructive lives - and
they do not always even know that there is a problem. I have come
to believe that our golden destiny will be fulfilled when with
the wisdom of serpents and gentleness of doves, we give them something
to eat. Please help us get off to a good start on May 9 at the
Kingston Armory.
(return to Bishop Paul's Columns
Index)
Please direct any
questions or comments to the webmaster@diobeth.org
