I never imagined my trip to Africa would raise such troubling questions about ordinary Episcopal Church life in the U.S. The headline controversies of Biblical authority or homosexuality weren’t what shook me there. It was daily conversations with African and Western non-governmental (NGO) workers and church leaders struggling to practice development rather than mere relief.
We don’t have too look far to see the bright spots in our church. Check out the growing network of Episcopal Internship Communities across the United States. For several decades, churches and dioceses have sponsored small groups (4-8) of young adults (18-30 years old or so) who live in community and each member works at a social service agency.
I pointed to our contractor, Mohammed, and his two assistants, Solomon and Idriss. Normally, the three men dig pit latrines. But the idea of storing water in underground cisterns, where it will stay cool and clean, instead of in 55-gallon plastic barrels or rusted metal tanks, appeals to them. Already, they are thinking of how all this clean water will change the lives of all the people who have access to it.
It is easy for us to say that we love our neighbor, and in fact, many of us repeat those verses every Sunday. It is easy to strike our chests and claim we have given a certain amount of our money to the local shelter, a hospice in Guatemala or even for the Millenium Development Goals, but would we be willing to leave the ease of modern life and share all we have with the miserable? No, we would not.
Maybe participants are being spurred not only by generosity but also by a quest to find out what meaning people enjoy while living with hardships that North Americans can barely imagine. Many people return from their pilgrimages to Central American villages with questions such as: How come that people who live with such physical discomforts seem far happier and contented, more trusting and hospitable than we are, who are so cocooned and protected?
I don’t even know her. I must admit I have seen her around, she may even have come to our dinners for the homeless on occasion, but I don’t know her. Our chance encounter this morning changes all of that though. I know she is 25 years old, I know she is thinner than she should be, I know she is an addict, and there isn’t much doubt she is mentally ill.
of this? Excerpted from the Times of London: The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the
From Episcopal News Service: Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold joined the leaders of four other Christian denominations today in a statement calling on members of
I am not a huge fan of The Nation, largely because so many of its leading lights are glib yet ignorant on the subject of