Hello dear friends... Here I am, on the road.
Now I don't remember if I told all y'all (as they say down South) about this. Let me run through it for those who don't know (and those who've heard it a million times please bear with me!)
Paul has in the past done a long walk that he calls a pilgrimage--though it's not to any kind of "holy site" unless in the broad sense that the earth is the Lord's and everything in it... He has walked out with some gear in a backpack, a walking stick, and a little money, and basically depending on God for food and shelter--and God has come through. The idea is... I guess there are many ideas. To learn to depend on God; to be a witness to others that God does come through when you depend on Him. To go out into the world and meet whoever God chooses to put in your path; to speak to them out of your own faith and God willing bring them closer to Him. To learn, to deepen your walk with God, to do something that is totally contrary to "the ways of the world".
So he has done this before, and now we're doing it together. We have a couple of additional reasons why it's a good thing for us to do, right now, while we wait on God's timing for a retreat space to open up at Plow Creek (or to see the way forward in some other way.) Deepening our faith is part of it, preparing us for ministry; also experiencing what we can (though it's still quite different) of what the homeless feel. And we have several visits planned with ministries that, although they're not doing spiritual retreats, are engaging the poor spiritually in creative and respectful ways--so we thought we could learn some things from them. And finally, we hope that God may give us some people along the way who are interested when we tell them about the ministry we hope to do--maybe even interested enough to consider supporting us.
So those are the reasons, and therefore here we are, two days and twenty miles out from Boston where we started (after a long visit with Ecclesia ministries who do an outdoor church for the homeless there), and headed south.We know our route for the next few days--over the weekend, in fact, because we may not have internet access until Monday or Tuesday. Paul looks up maps online, searches out libraries (which is where we get online in the first place!), grocery stores, and churches. If there's no other option for where to sleep, we go to a church and ask permission to sleep on the property--or, if there's no one there, go ahead and sleep on it, in some unobtrusive spot. Last night was under a tree in a broad parklike place behind a Unitarian church--there wasn't anyone to ask, their website says they don't even meet in the summer! (I always did think that if you don't believe in God, why bother to get up before ten on Sundays at all?)
So there it is. I will probably be emailing you intermittently with stories, but there aren't any yet; we haven't really met anyone yet. Except for a guy in a suit who gave us twenty bucks after we told him we were headed to Florida and asked where the nearest park was (I think he realized we were looking for a place to sleep and felt guilty that he wasn't about to invite us home!) And a guy with whom we waited for a library to open, today, and chatted about conservation and wildlife photography. Not earth-shattering. But I expect there will be more interesing stories later on...
I'll keep you posted!
