EPF Members Participate in Annual Pilgrimage

Several members of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship participate in the annual Jonathan Daniels pilgrimage to Hayneville, Alabama on Saturday, August 11.  The pilgrimage honors Jonathan Myrick Daniels and all the civil rights martyrs of Alabama.

(More information on Jonathan Daniels is here:  

The Rev. Canon Debra Shew, canon for community ministries in the Diocese of Atlanta, and EPF member, has agreed to share here photos from the pilgrimage here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DebbieShew/JonathanDanielsMartyrsOfALPilgrimage2007

(Thanks to the Rev. Joseph Shippen, EPF Atlanta, chapter convener and assistant rector of St. James’ Church, Marietta, Georgia, for the photo on the cover page of the Monthly Update.)

 Courtney Vaughan, program director at St. Benedict’s Church, Atlanta has shared the following reflection on the pilgrimage:

 “Who knew you could get chills outside in 103 degree weather?”

 I went on the Jonathan Daniels Pilgirmage for the first and, until this year, only time in 2002.  My first experience was so powerful, so life changing, I was afraid to go back.  Afraid, I wouldn’t feel the same things and be disappointed.  I wanted to preserve in my memory the awesome experience I had in Hayneville.  But I assure you now, going back was nothing to fear.  The power of the Holy Spirit was among us pilgrims; the seeds of peace, love, & hope planted in each of us were in full bloom.  I say as I have so many times; if you get the chance to go to Hayneville, go.

Early last Saturday morning I and 20 other Episcopalians from the Diocese of Atlanta set off on a bus for the city of Hayneville in Lowndes County, AL.  We made a brief stop in West Point to pick up 2 more of our fellow Episcopalians.  We shared our own stories with each other about why we were on the bus that day and then we heard Jonathan Daniels’s story as told in the video Here Am I, Send Me. 

We were in Hayneville by 11am, the sun already high in the sky, the temperature climbing into the low 100’s.  We joined the gathering of over two hundred people and began our march from the town square, then proceeded on to the jail (where Jonathan and 23 others spent 6 days in inhumane conditions).  We then stopped at the cash store, where upon its step a lone candle burned (on this spot Jonathan, protecting 16 year old Ruby Sales, was shot and killed by Tom Coleman).  Afterwards we circled back to the town square to the memorial erected by Virginia Military Institute (Jonathan’s alma mater), and finally gathered for Eucharist in the Lowndes County Courthouse (where Jonathan’s killer was found not guilty 42 years ago).

It was a bright, hot, sunny day, and those of us who were sitting in that courthouse could have come up with a hundred different excuses to have stayed at home.  But something, I like to think the Holy Spirit, brought us all to Hayneville, many of us returning, having been on the pilgrimage before.  For as Jonathan himself said. “The imperative was too clear, the stakes were too high, my own identity was called nakedly into question… and the road to Damascus led for me, back here.”   Our road lead us to Jonathan Daniels and to Hayneville, and last Saturday there was no were else we would have been.