Accompaniment- A Comment from India

My friend Greg Rake sent this comment from India where he works with the Rural Development Institute helping landless people get rights to land.

There is so much I would like to share about this book…first, I give thanks to God for Jerry and Judy and their lives of service.  Our paths initially crossed in Quito, Ecuador about 25 years ago.  And it has been a joy and blessing ever since as we have been blessed to be linked in different ways across the years. 

Whereas Jerry and Judy began their service in South Asia and then ended spending a lot of time in Latin America and other parts of the world;  I started in Latin America, formalized the relationship by marrying my wife, Inés, a wonderful woman of Bolivia, and now we are ending our “professional” career in India.  And like many of the places they have served, we never had a grand plan…we simply felt called to serve.

There is a wonderful concept of development that Jerry presents in The Spirituality of Service.  It is the idea of accompaniment.  I first heard this phrase from Jerry and Pedro Veliz from Lutheran World Relief.  It is about walking alongside people regardless of who and where they are.  Here in India people often talk of “hand-holding” as a way of walking alongside, especially in the development sector.  This morning in my walk it was beautifully illustrated by a very common custom of two men holding hands as they walk.  Sometimes they walk silently next to each other, then they may talk excitedly and then, one may take the lead as they cross a street busy with traffic, but you have to be close to hold hands.

Jerry’s book is about that kind of walking together, of walking close in a relationship with God, with you yourself, with others and with the environment.  While reading the chapters you can easily feel that someone has come alongside you, slipped their hand in yours and is walking with you.  And there are times when it is quietly accompanying you, shaking you up or just providing some wisdom for guiding your journey.  One of my favorite Bible stories is about the walk to Emmaus because Jesus was doing just that – walking alongside, talking with them, engaging in their doubts, and without judgment.  That is the gift of this book – it shares a wealth of experiences from so many contexts and settings, it invites you to the journey and it asks,  “And what about you?” 

Greg,