On the Way Home to Pittsburgh
It’s always interesting to read somebody else’s perspective on you. So here is how Father Marc Jacobson viewed our time together, as reported in his most recent Prayer Letter:
I was in Manila a mere 36 hours before the arrival of Bishop Dorsey McConnell from Pittsburgh via Taiwan. We spent an awesome five days together as he experienced nearly every aspect of our mission work. He met the Executive Secretary of the Roman Catholic Biblical Commission with whom we have worked so closely to gain Imprimatur for SIL translations. He prayed with our scholars at 5am and again just before going to bed, and got to know them in a variety of contexts in between. He travelled by taxi, pedicab, plane, jeepney, motorcycle and outrigger canoe, failing only in his desire to ride a water buffalo. He met with Capul’s bishop and helped us gain his promise to sign the Memorandum of Agreement on October 8 for the continuing work of the Inabaknon Heritage Society.
Then we took the first of three outrigger canoes to Capul where he videoed Bible studies, joined in morning and evening prayers, hiked five miles to the sustainable farm (and swam in the ocean) before returning to town by boat and “motorcycle taxi”. He saw the light house built in 1902 and with 20 distinguished guests of the IHS dedicated the Library and ground floor of the Center to God’s good purposes. Oh yes, there was a whole roasted pig and he was taught cultural dances. More evening prayers and a flawless return to Manila and his early morning flight to the US.
I was exhausted and went back to bed until noon….
My greatest blessing from the bishop’s recent visit was that his presence forced me to explain, and thereby to see anew what had become too familiar. I wish you could all visit Capul, experiencing first hand, as did he, that this island, and the Abaknon a people, are indeed well worth your commitment.
Now, this is fascinating. In the first place I thought he was the “indefatigable one” and I was the one trying to keep up with
Mass with Marc+ at the Library
him. Secondly, when I look at my schedule the way he describes it, it does seem like a lot; but at the time it just seemed normal. So since I returned, I have been considering my tendency to think something more can always be fit into my calendar.
I have been back home a little more than a week, now, and at first, it didn’t seem like a big deal, all the travel. Yes, it did seem a little weird landing in the US an hour before I took off from Japan (the dateline thing), but I slept well on the plane, and went straight from the airport to the McLure Lecture at PTS given by an old friend of mine, Dr. Daniel Jeyeraj. Daniel is a great missiologist, now teaching in England. His lecture addressed the myriad ways that the Christian mission to India actually affected Christianity in Europe, Britain and the United States– a potent reminder that there is no such thing as “the local Church!” Tuesday I had my usual meetings and taught in the evening on the English Reformation from 1520 to 1558 at PTS– the introduction to Anglicanism that Jay Geisler and I are leading. Wednesday
Seeing the Face of God in Squirrel Hill
began with a Bible study at the Rivers Club, then meetings at the Cathedral, ending with Solemn Evensong at the Church of the Redeemer in Squirrel Hill. Thursday was Staff, a long phone call with other bishops, and in the evening a webcast with TREC, the task force of resturcturing the Episcopal Church. Friday and Saturday were the anti-Racism Workshop, and Sunday a great visitation with the good people of Saint Francis in Somerset.
I hit the wall Monday night just in time for Diocesan Council. I’m not sure what I said for my report, but blessedly, I kept it short. I started writing this on Tuesday; I have been getting steadily more sane, and am presently at the Clergy Conference in Ligonier, learning a lot more about preaching from my colleagues with the help of Fr. Jason Ingalls, Director of the Scholar Priests Initiative, which is proving to be an enormous blessing.
So let me draw two lessons from the conjunctions of these experiences– my life in the Pacific, and my life back home here in Southwest Pennsylvania.
Lesson One: Do not confuse your busy-ness with God’s work. Hopefully, my schedule is in service to Jesus; if that is true then He is the Master of my time. We read in the gospels that at times the
Jason Ingalls+ with New Friends at Clergy Conference
disciples were so busy, “with many coming and going, so that they had no leisure even to eat.” And yet Jesus is not harried, never hectic, always serenely Himself even in the midst of 5,000 hungry people. My Father is working still, He notes (John 5:17), and I am working. I am learning that sometimes the less I try to cram everything into my schedule, the more easily I can see God at work and see more easily how to come alongside that work.
Lesson Two: Jesus means what He says about the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32). A little Episcopal parish on Taiwan decides to start a kindergarten; thirty years later it has four hundred kids, has rebuilt twelve churches in another country, and occupies half a city block. An Episcopal missionary washes up on an island in the Phlippines with the idea of translating the New Testament into Inabaknon; thirty-six years later 30,000 people have received the gift of literacy in their own language, and a Biblical Renewal Movement is sweeping Catholic Churches across the country. Ask each of the players in these miracles and they will acknowledge that while they had something to do with it, it was all about the power of God.
Since I have been home, I am seeing and hearing about this power breaking out in new ways through and around our churches– many of them small in numbers but leaning on Christ’s hope for them to grow in confidence about their future. As bishop, I will try to help that work wherever I find it, preach that hope where it is absent, encourage it where it is weak, bear witness to its fruit wherever I see it coming forth. I’ll put forward some more thoughts about this at Convention, how we can all do this better together, but for the moment, let me simply ask what would happen if we took in the full import of this promise of Jesus: My Father is working still, and I am working.
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