06 February 2011

 

PATRICK BUTLER: Under the Waterfall

     There were some astonishing aspects of the six-day Trail of Healing project down the Texas leg of the El Camino Real, last week. One was the demonstration of faith beyond the four walls of any given building, on any given Sunday and taking faith to the real world.     
    About 25 people from different churches, denominations and even states took time out to participate in traveling nearly 2,000 miles in six days covering the ancient Spanish route called “the Royal Road” from Natchitoches, La. to Roma, Texas, about 800 miles.
  Taking faith to the real “worlds,” perhaps I should say.  In this era of movies such as “Inception” that describes a few different realities, it shouldn’t be too hard to envision history itself as a reality we live with daily.  When it comes to faith, people also regularly believe in something called “heaven” – an invisible place  to our eyes at the moment that many church-goers will freely say is “more real” than daily life we face today.   But more on that later.
   One impressive aspect of the Trail of Healing over the old “Royal Road” from Roma, near the troubled border towns of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo is that it was not organized by a large non-profit ministry with a million-dollar budget and decades of sophisticated “crusades,” or television and print promos.
    Instead, the Trail of Healing was nearly an ad hoc band of believers that “signed up” to help Texas “re-establish righteousness” along an historic route – the El Camino Real – that has experienced all kinds of spiritual troubles in its path for centuries.

     The “Trail” band prayed it’s way through the Nacogdoches city square where Davy Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers signed up for the Alamo incident, to the ancient Caddoian Mounds of 850 A.D., to the first Mission site – Mission Tejas – in East Texas, to the campus of Texas A&M, to the troubled border with Mexico at Laredo (the sheriff of Nuevo Laredo was shot down the day the team arrived in Laredo) to and finally to Roma, home to about 9,000 people.
     The route to Roma was a drug and human trafficking corridor said DEA Special Agent Lanny Hall, who was accompanying the Trail team. Hall, 55, said the DEA was “just trying to keep the lid from blowing off.”
   Ordinary people with faith in an extraordinary God made this trip on the El Camino Real.  I know that sounds trite, but in this case it was true.
    I was there to witness it and report on what I saw, and here is what I saw, night after night for six days; faith in action. And there was plenty variety of expressions of faith during the hundreds of miles traveled each day that would stretch the imagination of many people, such as myself, who say they believe that God exists, but rarely believe he wants us to do something about it, beyond what we already know.
   That was the Trail of Healing in a nutshell: A Learning Experience. A “teachable moment,” if you will, as the trendy saying now goes, for six full days.  Led by the Rev. Dr. Tom Schlueter, pastor of Prince of Peace church in Dallas. Schlueter is also the leader of the Texas Apostolic Prayer Network.  There was much to be learned about addressing the roots of problems past and bring spiritual healing to the land and its people from Schlueter and his team of leaders.
   When we arrived at Roma, the congregation was literally in tears that someone – anyone - cared enough to show up, pray for them, drop off supplies of clothing and food for the poor, and about $12,000 in donations picked up along the way.  As long as I live, I will never forget the women crying and hugging us at the service that evening, saying over and over, “God bless you for coming.”
   It really wasn’t that hard coming after all, I remember thinking at the church in Roma, that night. It was a very long drive, yes, but compared to the gratitude shown and effect we had, not a very dear price. We were also received in gratitude in churches of various denominational and non-denominational stripes – with different approaches to worship and styles.   But one thing everyone agreed on at every stop; something had to be done for Texas.  It was time to clean up the Royal Road, and say “no more bad things happen on my watch,” as Schlueter put it. “Enough.”
   Special Agent Hall outlined some of the bad things happening along our borders – and over it - that curled my toes; stories of vengeance, threats, manipulation, sorrow, despair and killings. But it was the pastor in Roma who let us know in no uncertain terms that what we had heard from Hall was just the tip of the iceberg. As he quietly explained what some of his congregants had seen. Even Special Agent Hall looked sobered to the point where he could only rub his eyes, and stare at the floor quietly, shaking his head. It was that real.
     The stories reminded me of horrors I heard during the Killing Fields era in Cambodia in the 1970’s. Now this is reality on our borders and spilling over into our country. Special Agent Hall  asked that “the Body of Christ please come together and do something. Draw upon the resources each other has to help deliver Laredo from the problems at its borders. Have “Kingdom” goals in mind, more than individual church goals.”
  Sounds like good advice.
   The Trail of Healing was a wake-up call to the church at large: don’t wait for “someone else” to do it, organize it or launch out or go for it. We do it. Either join someone who has experience in trips like this, or organize it ourselves after considered prayer. Texas – or whatever state you live in – really needs someone to say “enough” now.  

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