Address to the 2006 General Convention House of Deputies
by the Rev. Lee Alison Crawford, Ph. D.
Friday, June 16, 2006

[The Very Rev. George Werner, President of the House of Deputies, invited six members of the House of Deputies to open each legislative day by sharing something of their faith and ministries. He asked the Rev. Lee Alison Crawford to speak to the deputies on the day the Most Rev. Martin Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America was seated with the Vermont deputation. Crawford is rector of Saint Mary’s Parish, Northfield, Vermont, and Canon Missioner of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador. She is Province One’s clergy representative to Executive Council.]

We are all pilgrims, whether we have claimed that name or not. For most of my adult life I have walked, both spiritually and physically, the pilgrimage route that has been set before me. I live by the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, who wrote, Caminante, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar. Traveller, there is no way; the way is made by walking. These words, by no means, contradict my belief that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. However, on a daily basis, I discover God’s accompaniment as I walk on a faith journey that is constantly unfolding and around whose curves lie surprises, delights and riches.

For twelve years, I have made pilgrimages to El Salvador, first as an individual, then as a member of the board of Fundación Cristosal, a foundation that works with the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, and now as Canon Missioner of the Iglesia Anglicana Episcopal de El Salvador. In that role, my responsibility is to share the good news of the work and people of our sister Anglican Church to the rest of the world. Their bishop, the Most Rev’d Martín Barahona, who is also Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Region of Central America, sits today with the Vermont deputation. In all my wildest musings about vocation, I never thought that God would call me to walk with my sisters and brothers of El Salvador.

Nothing in my early background would have led me to consider such a ministry. I grew up in an affluent white suburb of New York City, completed a doctorate in an arcane field — medieval French language and literature — that would seem to have little relevance in today’s complex world, and taught French and Spanish before ordination. Later, I served as a ship-visiting chaplain in Port Newark, under the auspices of the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York and New Jersey, while also doing parish ministry.

While those disparate elements didn’t seem to fit together at the time, in retrospect, I realize how they have come together to play major roles in my spiritual journey and vocation. As Canon Missioner of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, I now can integrate faith, vocation and language.

In fact, understanding another place, culture and people in the context of my Christian faith has always been a major component of my pilgrimage, going back to my insistence, as a 14 year-old, to my bewildered aunt and uncle that I had to visit the Amsterdam house where Anne Frank lived during WWII.

I have been graced with the gift of language, which enables me to enter profoundly into the cultures of those who speak French and Spanish. Yet, I have learned from all my time in El Salvador, and living with the people of the Anglican Church, that even with a shared language, I will always be an outsider, a foreigner. That knowledge is important and reminds me that at all times one is both insider and outsider, and those different perspectives inform one’s interactions. That in-between state is a pilgrim moment.

Despite looking from within and without, the sacramental life constantly bridges the differences between this white north-easterner and her Salvadoran sisters and brothers. As we have come together to break bread and share the cup at a little church whose roof is made out of black plastic bags covered by palm branches, or as I have brought communion to women prisoners in a low-security institution whose set-up defies imagination, I have again and again sensed Jesus in our midst. When I attended the blessing of a church restored to life with funds from Episcopal Relief and Development and the United Thank Offering after the devastating 2001 earthquake, I felt the Holy Spirit moving in the congregation. When I anointed a man severely burned in a house fire, I saw underlined his fragility as a brother human being, created in God’s image, just as you and I are.

The people of the Iglesia Anglicana Episcopal de El Salvador are thriving as they reach out, and spread word of God’s love to their communities broken by gang wars, abject poverty, governmental corruption and a loss of hope. The church represents a prophetic and respected voice in its country, based squarely in the baptismal vows to seek and serve Christ, loving our neighbour as ourselves and to respect the dignity of every human being.

I have been moved by Salvadoran Anglicans’ witness to Jesus, Son of Mary, who knew what it was like to be one of God’s little ones and who walked with them. As a pilgrim, I recognise another gift my Salvadoran sisters and brothers have taught me: humility. Dom Helder Camarra said Nadie es tan pobre que no puede dar; nadie es tan rico que no puede recebir. None are so poor that they cannot give; none are so rich that they cannot receive. Each trip to El Salvador reminds me of that so important adage and how it fits into my spiritual journey.

My Salvadoran sisters and brothers have shown me faithfulness — another gift on this pilgrimage. Some of that faithfulness consists in simply showing up, hanging out on the church steps, and waiting to see who else will come. As I have returned again and again to El Salvador, people have also learned to trust that I am faithful to them. Together, as the two or three gathered in Christ’s name, we create the koinonia so deeply desired for us by our Creator. Together, we model for the rest of the Anglican Communion what it means to reach across cultural differences and languages, yet remain united in our faith in the risen Jesus.

Just as you and I share in Christ’s body and blood, we also all share the same colour of blood that flows through our veins. What I experience and learn in El Salvador, I bring back to, and share with, the people of Saint Mary’s Parish in Northfield, Vermont, a family-size congregation in a rural diocese and state. The people of Saint Mary’s have benefited vicariously from all my travels to El Salvador and have entered into a sense of shared mission with their companion Salvadoran Anglicans. The challenges of spiritual hunger and growth, making ends meet, reaching out beyond one’s doors to the community, and most of all, assuring one another that God loves all of us, are universal, whether one is a Vermonter, Salvadoran or any other nationality.

Caminante, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar. Traveller, there is no way, the way is made by walking. May God guide us all on the pathways and pilgrimages laid out before us and may we have hearts open to receive the gifts and challenges these pilgrimages offer us.

Go to General Convention 2006 index page on this site