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.
Pilgrims Miss Sights to Have Vision
Bishop Paul left for Swaziland February 22.
He will return March 2.
Diocesan Life, March 2000
[Editor's note: Bishop
Paul is preparing to go on pilgrimage to tiny Swaziland
in southern Africa. He will leave on February 22 and return
March 2.
He intends to "miss the sights in order to have
the vision." He will be spending time at an AIDS hospice, "a
place where the Holy Spirit can work." Dr. Ned Wallace of Trinity
Church, Bethlehem, our diocesan medical missioner to Swaziland,
and his wife, Emily, have been there since early January. Dan
and Maggie Land, also parishioners at Trinity, will be working
there for a month beginning late February. "Under their guidance," Bishop
Paul intends to "seek the face of Christ among the suffering
and those who care for them."
In late March and early April, Dane Bragg, diocesan
missioner for youth and social ministries, and others from
our World Mission Committee plan to visit Swaziland and the
exiled Sudanese diocese of Kaju Keji.
After Bishop Paul returns and before this group
departs, they will discuss together the bishop's experience
and begin to formulate the practical questions about possible
diocesan partnership relationships they will then explore in
both places.
Bishop Paul wrote the following column for the
March edition of Diocesan Life.]
The doctor said, "So where is your lucky trip to be?" "South Africa
and Swaziland," I answered. "Ah, how many of the wonderful national
parks will you visit." "None, I'm afraid." "Well, you're missing
the best part. Can't you change your schedule?" "No, I'm going
on business." - "Oh."
He left and I waited quietly for the nurse to return with a six-gauge
dull needle for each thigh, picked up my new immunization card,
and left thinking about the difference between travel and pilgrimage.
If you know me at all, you know that I hate travel, especially
air travel. It inevitably complicates my diabetes, makes my bad
discs worse, and murders my bad shoulder. All that said, there
is enough of the peasant left in me that I miss my own bed.
But part of pilgrimage is the inconvenience. One endures the trip
as an element of emptying, of moving oneself toward a new and open
space in the spiritual terrain, a place where the Holy Spirit can
work. Like most people, it takes me a couple of days to realize
what I should have said. What I should have said to the doctor
was that pilgrims miss the sights in order to have the vision.
As you read this, I will be on or returning from a pilgrimage.
After flying to Johannesburg, South Africa, I will spend most of
my time in tiny Swaziland at an AIDS hospice and in its surrounding
villages.
As you know from last month's Diocesan Life, HIV/AIDS affects
at least a third of the pregnant women in Swaziland, and Africa
is looking at forty million orphans being left by AIDS in the next
five years.
Dr. Ned and Emily Wallace have been there since early January.
Dan and Maggie Land will be working there by the time I arrive.
Under their guidance I will go seeking the face of Christ among
the suffering and those who care for them.
Following my time in Swaziland I will go to Cape Town, where I
am hoping to speak informally with as many South African bishops
as I can about relations between our churches.
What I hope to bring back with me is an experience of African
faith and a clearer vision of God's call to us in Bethlehem with
regard to our sisters and brothers in Africa. Personally, I hope
to be further stripped of American assumptions about the meaning
of the words, "standard of living."
Pilgrims do not usually talk: they look, listen, reflect, and
pray, and this will be the mode in which I will try to stay. If
I am nevertheless asked to speak in Swaziland, I will try to give
them a witness to the discipleship of the people and clergy of
our Diocese, and do what I can to give them some sense of what
a former colonial church looks like two centuries later.
Perhaps some of the good and the bad we have experienced in the
Americanization of Christianity will be useful to them now that
they have set their eyes on the Africanization of the faith. Again,
I will not be volunteering this.
In late March and early April, the Rev. Dane Bragg, missioner
for youth and social ministries, and others from our World Mission
Committee plan to visit Swaziland and the exiled Sudanese diocese
of Kaju Keji (home of Father Michael Kiju Paul).
Between my return and their departure, we will discuss my experience
and begin to formulate the practical questions about possible diocesan
partnership that they will then explore in both places.
This is the year when we intensify our shift into mission. Share
the Bread 2000 gives each of us the opportunity to invite a friend
to share the Episcopal experience of Christianity.
It is my hope that The World Mission Committee, which revived
so wonderfully last year, will bring to our June convention a plan
for us to serve Christ's neediest people and to deepen our contacts
with Christians around the world.
(return to Bishop Paul's Columns
Index)
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