HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest
MICHAELMAS A.D. 2006
THOSE OF
you who have read a “Hillspeaking” or two over the years know that I have an
abiding interest, and some small part, in all of the Ministries of Hillspeak,
but that Operation Pass Along is my “baby.”
I have always had a passion for books (as a private in the Marine Corps
I lugged the Harvard Classics around in a sea bag; when Patient Wife and I
married the first piece of furniture we bought was a bookcase). Living and working at Hillspeak has enabled
me to indulge that passion to the fullest.
A
“Hillspeaking” earlier this year threw some Pass Along statistics at TAD
readers with the caveat that letters and e-mails, visits and phone calls flesh
out the bare bones of numbers.
I have
worked with Pass Along thirty-four years, almost from its inception, and find
it as exciting and rewarding today as it was in 1972.
To find on
the shelves a book that a seminarian needs for required reading, or one that a
layman or laywoman vaguely remembers and wants to read again, or books for a
Third World theological college in a given area or discipline is likely to
evoke an unspoken “Eureka!” on my part and profuse thanks from the
beneficiaries.
There are
all sorts of vignettes that go with thirty-four years of receiving and passing
along: the seminarian in Wisconsin who was one of my earliest “clients” is the
father of the seminarian, now priested and with a cure in Alaska, who wrote
that “Dad” told him to get in touch with Pass Along; the American priest
serving in the South Pacific, the Church of Melanesia, who has visited
Hillspeak (his mother lives in Oklahoma), opened a dialogue with Pass Along
that has resulted in our beginning to provide books for a nascent library for a
theological college in the Solomon Islands; the books are being sent one
mailbag at a time;
The couple
in Louisiana who called to ask if they could send a five-figure donation to
Pass Along; they did and doubled the amount they suggested — and strictly
stipulated that both donor and amount were to be anonymous; their generosity
has enabled Pass Along to help start the library in the Solomons as well as
providing Third World clerics, seminarians and lay folk much needed books and
vestments;
A
“partnership” with an Anglican priest in Ghana who acts as Pass Along’s “agent”
in that part of Africa to further distribute books and vestments we send him;
regularly we receive letters or e-mails that say, in one way or another,
“Father X gave me a chasuble or a Bible or a book or a stole and said it came
from Pass Along” thank you!; the seminarian who, when ordained, sent TO Pass
Along an “ordination gift” of money in appreciation for the books sent during
seminary days; the number of widows of priests and bishops who have written to
thank us for taking their husband’s vestments and passing them along almost
always saying, in effect, that they couldn’t bear to throw them away yet knew
they served no purpose hanging in the closet.
The
vignettes could go on for a long, long time, but as numbers are not complete
without them, so too the whole story of Pass Along is not complete without
those who over the years have sent books and vestments (and cash to pass them
along). Many times in their thanks,
Third Worlders will also say “and thank you to those who donated.”
So say we.
©SPEAK, INC
805 CR 102 - EUREKA SPRINGS AR 72632-9705
PHONE: 479-253-9701 FAX:
479-253-1277 E-MAIL: speak@speakinc.org
