We Are Called

“We are called to love tenderly.

We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God.”—We Are Called, hymn by David Haas.

 My view of mission was initially shaped by stories of missionaries such as William Duncan and Marcus Whitman: The white man carrying his Bible into the wilderness, bringing salvation through the Word of God. I was very cynical about this type of mission.

Since I have worked for the Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM), my view of mission has improved considerably.  The organization sends Catholic lay people—single adults, couples, and families with young children—to serve in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each year, MKLM missioners who have finished their first three-and-a-half-year contract return to our headquarters to reflect on their experiences before either renewing their contract or leaving MKLM.

For me, the best part of this process is hearing their stories of mission.  One missioner, Kim Fischer, who is serving in Brazil with her husband and three children, spoke about how they struggled to find mission work that really fit with their skills and abilities and was meaningful.  A Maryknoll priest in Brazil told her that it was not so important what they did in mission, but rather how they acted in all areas of their life: both there in their mission work and in their private life.  The example they are to others, the relationships they build with the people they serve; that is what really matters in mission work. Kim felt this advice had a profound impact on her, and it has helped direct her mission life.

Another member of this class, Richard Ross, who served in Tanzania, said he was frustrated in his attempts to learn the Kiswahili language.  He shared his feelings with another missioner, Erik Cambier, who had served in Tanzania years before.  Erik told him that he still could make an effective contribution in mission even if he never became fluent in Kiswahili. He said, “You possess the most powerful language of them all. You have the language of love, and that, my friend, overrides everything else.”

Richard spent his entire mission at one location: The Lubango Center in Nyashana. His job title was Maryknoll Lay Missioner Advisor, and he shared his job description with me. He had a lot of duties—but perhaps his two most important duties were to welcome students to the Center and to be a “blessing” for those who came to the Center.  He told us he joined MKLM because he wanted to spend as much time as possible playing with children. This did not seem like much of a mission, but he showed a video of his farewell from the Center. The children lifted him up and carried him like a baseball player who has hit the winning home run.

I asked Erik why he felt Richard had such an impact, and he explained that in Tanzanian culture, childcare is seen as strictly women’s work.  Men have little or nothing to do with their children after they’re born. Richard treated the children of the Center with love and attention, which made Richard a very special man indeed. Perhaps his example will affect the behavior of the male children he worked with when they grow older. Spreading God’s love is what mission is all about.

Janice Fuquay, a missioner I have known for many years, tells a story I find particularly memorable.  She is a veterinarian, and she worked with men and women in the border region of Peru and Bolivia. They were raising llamas and alpacas to supplement their incomes. She would hold regular gatherings where they would share their experiences and give each other advice on how to deal with problems that arose. Janice spoke of how eager she was to read their evaluations at the end of the sessions, looking forward to finding out how successful they were at raising the animals and how much more money they made. What she found, instead, were testimonies about how much better they felt about themselves as persons.  One woman spoke of how her husband had grown to value her opinions and was proud of her accomplishments.  Another man wrote of how people turned to him for the first time as a source of knowledge and wisdom. “Of course,” Janice thought, “That’s what it was all about! It’s not about raising more llamas and alpacas; it’s about making them feel better about themselves and each other.” Janice showed them that they were people who had knowledge and abilities to share. How she behaved toward them would have greater long-term impact on their lives than their success or failure at animal husbandry.

The Book of Common Prayer in the General Thanksgiving, spoken at Morning and Evening Prayer, includes the following, “We pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service. . .” Some missioners I know are doctors, lawyers, and engineers who provide desperately needed health care, who help with uncaring justice systems, and who build wells to bring fresh water. Yet Christ calls all of us to mission, no matter what talents we possess. You can’t always change people’s lives, but what you can do is be present with them, share God’s love and accompany them on their journey. That is mission, too.

Originally published in the Episcopal New Yorker.

Trinity Exemplified

Hang on, folks, we're going on a ride here. Keep your hands inside the car.


For most of my life, I never felt God was communicating with me. I would meditate, pray, and hope I would feel some sort of energy pass through me in a recognizably Godlike way, but generally felt nothing. It has been only recently that I've thought that God may really be trying to guide me. See post entitled "God speaks in mysterious ways." Maybe it's just knowing what to look for, or being more sensitive to the possibility (or maybe I'm just fooling myself), but I have felt in the last year that God has been speaking to me in a way that I'm able to interpret.  Case in point:

I was sitting outside the Walsh building during lunch recently, reading The Divine Dance, a beautiful book on the Trinity by Fr. Richard Rohr. Rohr describes the Trinity as a Divine Dance between the three manifestations of God and ourselves. I was engrossed in reading throughout my lunch hour.

I got up to return to the office when I suddenly saw a little house sparrow chasing one of those ubiquitous, tiny white moths. I was mesmerized by the action: The moth gave the sparrow quite a chase, and suddenly another little sparrow joined in. Finally, they chased the moth into a bush, where a third little sparrow was waiting. Suddenly the moth was gone. I don't know which sparrow got it, but one (or all) apparently did.

I had just been reading  in The Divine Dance about how you can begin to understand the three phases of God and the interaction between them and us by sitting and contemplating nature. You find God and understanding in that plant, tree, sky ... or whatever is in view. So did I just witness the Holy Trinity in those three little sparrows in their dance with that poor little moth?

And who does the moth represent? Normally, I think of communion as a way of taking God inside me and then becoming filled with the Holy Spirit. Could God also consume me and unite with me that way? Was I the moth?

A chill runs down my spine.

God Speaks in Mysterious Ways

I listened to the interview and All Saints sermon of an Episcopal priest on Day One, a podcast site that has interviews and sermons by mainline Protestant preachers. I was particularly impressed by her suggestion that when eating out that you tell the waitperson you are going to bless your meal and ask what Blessing they would like you to offer them. She said the stories you hear are incredible and inspiring. I thought to myself, perhaps that is something I can do, if I'm not too shy. It is something I would like to do. The following morning, I took the train to work, and, as usual, I was doing Morning Prayer with my Book of Common Prayer in hand. A gentleman came and sat next to me, and looking at me, said, "Ah the daily bread ... would you like to share the daily bread?" I wasn't certain what he wanted, and then he said, "The Living bread". I understood what he meant by the bread, but I still wasn't sure what he wanted. Did he want me to read from the scriptures? So I just said, "Ahh, yes," and went back to my praying. He pulled out a book of his own and read. When I finished my prayers, I still had time on the train, so I pulled out another book I had just started--Escape Routes by Johann Christoph Arnold. A friend had sent me (and others) the book, and it seemed relevant to my condition right now, so I have been reading it. As I was sitting there in silence, I read the following: "...life's deepest fulfillment comes from valuing every human encounter, and showing love to everyone we meet, especially if they are lonely, despairing, or beaten down. What excuse can there be for not conquering our shyness in loving? ... As the novelist Alice Walker writes, 'Our last five minutes on earth are running out. We can spend those moments in meanness ... or we can spend them consciously embracing every glowing soul who wanders within our reach.'" Now in general I don't think God is that interested in speaking to me, but I thought I can't ignore this! I waited until the train to come to our stop. We both began to gather our things and I reached out my hand to him. He took it, and I said, "Have a good day. May God bless you and keep you. I'm sorry, but I'm a shy person." He looked at me and said, "That's okay," and he handed me a card for an evangelical gathering. I didn't go, but I'm glad I reached out. I owe that in part to the priest's words. I sent this story to the priest I heard on Day One, and she responded, “Thank you so very much for sharing your blessing story with me. I treasure it but what I especially love is the realizations that you had that 1. God is very interested in speaking to you and that 2. you have a story to tell, just as we all have a story to share. I will be sharing your story with my congregation and your quotes from Walker and Arnold. The circle keeps expanding.” Maybe I'll be able to pray for that waitperson after all.

Falling to My Knees

Wilderness: Empty of human influence; lacking shelter for protection; no guideposts to show the way. For thirty years I traveled in a spiritual wilderness without God’s grace, or so I thought.

I was baptized Episcopalian and raised in a non-doctrinal church in a rural area just north of Seattle. I decided when I was in high school that I wanted to be some sort of minister, but I realized that I had no idea what faith I belonged to. By the time I graduated, I no longer went to church on Sunday. I found myself in a spiritual wilderness—either agnostic or atheist, but unwilling to commit.

After college, I struggled to become an actor, but found little work on the West Coast. I decided to head east, and I took a cross-country bus to New York City. From Salt Lake City to Chicago, the only folks on the bus were a half dozen of us in our twenties. We rode through what looked like mostly empty land with few features, all journeying to new lives in new places. Upon arrival in New York four days later, a generous friend helped me get established by finding me a place to live and a job to pay the rent. I don’t know if I could have made the transition without her help.

My time in the spiritual wilderness was spent moving from place to place. I valued the people I met more than any of the few possessions I acquired. But then I found myself spending lunch hours just sitting in St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan. Not praying, not even quite realizing why I was there, just needing a break from the City buzz and finding comfort in the beautiful reredos filled with white figures stacked from the floor up and around the blue stained glass windows to the ceiling.

My life had been shaken by deaths and depression. I realized that I was trying to reestablish a relationship with God. But I didn’t know quite how to go about it. I needed guidance in leaving my spiritual wilderness.

My first source for help was Kathleen Norris’ Dakota, in which she suggested that people in search of a spiritual home should look to their roots. I decided my roots were in the Episcopal Church. I began attending noonday mass at St. Mary the Virgin, a couple of blocks from my office. But I was a stranger among strangers. I needed someone to talk to, to figure out if I was making some sort of progress or walking in circles through desert wastes.

A few years later I found that person—two persons actually. By this point I was working for a Catholic lay missionary organization (Maryknoll Lay Missioners), and I became good friends with two missioners who had returned from Mexico and were working on staff. They were a married couple named Jean and Joe. They had spent their lives in mission helping those in need and living in a way that reflected their Christian faith. They returned from Latin America after Joe had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Joe’s belief in spiritual wholeness led him to strive for wellness within his cancerous wilderness in a way consistent with his faith. His cancer was in remission for years.

When I wandered out of my spiritual wilderness, both Joe and Jean served as my guides, even if this relationship was never openly defined as such. Joe and I had lunch together about once a week, and our conversations covered all manner of spiritual and moral questions.

Jean was my companion on many excursions as I defined what my role as a newly reborn Christian was to be. I wanted to be more than a go-to-church-on-Sunday type of Christian. I wanted to live my faith every day in all my encounters with others. When I discovered the Episcopal Diocese of New York had a two-day anti-racism training for clergy and church leaders, Jean accompanied me, even though she was Catholic. We continued to share an interest in the work after I became involved with the Diocesan committee on anti-racism.

Even in small ways, they demonstrated Christian hospitality to me. I used to walk past their home every day up a steep hill on the way to work. One morning I was making my way through a snowy climb when I heard the voices of their daughters Hannah and Maria calling my name. They told me the office was closed because of the weather and invited me in. Jean was waiting for me with a cup of tea to warm me up for the trip back home.

When Joe’s cancer returned and he passed away, their wisdom and grace continued to inspire me. Jean spoke at the funeral ceremony of their wedding day. Joe pulled her aside and said, “Pay attention. This will all be over in the blink of an eye.” At the time, she thought he was speaking about the wedding; now she felt it was about their life together. I remembered a day when I saw him standing among trees whose leaves were blazing with fall color. He seemed so overwhelmed with awe; I thought he would fall to his knees.

Jean has since become a United Church of Christ minister. I was honored to be asked to her ordination, which was filled with testimonies to her spirituality and Christian behavior.

Although Jean no longer works with me and our interactions are fewer now than I would like, I still feel close to her, and she remains a guide to me even now. I still hear Joe’s voice giving me wise advice as I face moral choices. I have never known anyone whose lives were so marked by the joy of their beliefs. I have learned that I will remain in the wilderness until God calls me to his arms. Jean and Joe taught me that my job until then is to find the beauty hidden in the desolation.