Pilgrim Ambassadors

Many & Mary in Their RV

 I woke up yesterday morning wondering, ‘Where are they now? Did they beat the snow in the Rockies? Will that old rig make it back to Portland?’

Affiliates Manny Hotchkiss and Mary Ryan-Hotchkiss often find themselves on the road traversing the country for weeks on end in their modest RV. Though a civil engineer and Ph.D. chemist respectively, they are not on some scientific research project.  Nor are they sightseers looking to see how many national parks they can check off on their bucket list. It might better be said that they are pilgrims not tourists.  

About pilgrims and pilgrimages, Victor and Edith Turner wrote: “Pilgrimages are no walk in the park, or plain, or mountain. The pilgrim is invited not only to walk out of boxes of dogmatic beliefs, but also to walk away from practices of comfortable spirituality.” That seems right. Like many Maryknollers, their spirituality and faith commitment is deeply aligned with issues of justice, especially for the disenfranchised among us. That’s just about never a comfortable space to live in.

To put together a proper post about these two, it would be important to have a map in front of me to plot out all the highways, back roads and stopovers along the way.  That is not available. However, I do know that on their last trip they stopped in El Paso for a week, volunteering in immigration work and getting a sense of the needs there for the projected Affiliate mission. Mary and Manny also go out of their way to search out Affiliate Chapters and other Maryknoll hangouts. They announce their coming and often bring groups of Maryknollers together for conversations and a communal meal. Wonderful and important gatherings that spark a sense of camaraderie and connection among us. And too, just for kicks, Manny serves on the Affiliate Board as finance chair and Mary is co-editor of NSFA along with Paula Schaffner.

We cannot know with certainty what motivates Manny and Mary (any of us) for doing the things we do, especially on those pilgrimages. A verse comes to mind that gives a hint. Many of us have heard Manny (A.K.A., Elvis) sing at gatherings: “Wise men (sic) say only fools rush in.”