The stepping horse and mission
Modern roads and transport have relegated "the stepping horse" to a prized animal of beauty and a big tourist attraction in Peru. Peru's Pacific coastline stretches from Ecuador down to Chile and is close to 3,000kms of desert. This is broken about every 180kms by a fertile river valley coming off the Andes. The coastal population has always inhabited these valleys.
Intercommunication along the coast gave "the stepping horse" its role. A galloping horse flounders in sand, quickly placing its life at risk.
Someone, somewhere, watching a horse step gingerly into sand must have had the insight to strap its forelegs to force it to continue to step that way. After that it would have been a matter of time and patience and constant re-adjustment of the straps to make it tread on sand. Racing "trotters" and "pacers" would be a coherent parallel in an Australia/New Zealand context.
"The stepping horse" learns to walk at a steady pace by throwing forward each leg one at a time in a rounded movement, a bit like us 'dog-paddling' in water in our first attempts to swim. At this steady constant pace it can walk across sand carrying a rider or baggage.
On occasion "the stepping horse" has been suggested as a symbol for us as missionaries. We are meant to cross ‘deserts’ too but it's easy to flounder powerless, in the unknown terrain of another culture.
We bear important Good News from afar, granted it is not capable of obliterating the desert of economic poverty we find ourselves half- buried in, but, it is News well-measured to restore a sense of human dignity to people deprived over generations of any sense of self-worth.
People deliberately treated in this manner are left with a sense of being only chattels.
The "Good News" is quite strong in its emphasis: you are as good as anyone else, you are a person, you are a child of the same loving Father. “And the king will answer, 'Truly I tell you: anything you did for one of my brothers (sisters) here, however insignificant, you did for me' [Matt 25:40]". Though various 'desert contexts' may appear to deny it, we all share the same dignity.
Once trained, the stepping horse was invaluable for coastal transport prior to roads linking the valleys.
Young missionaries arriving in Peru are confronted with a similar problem. (I think of myself many years ago). We can´t step into the 'desert' of another culture and gallop as we would in our own.
Aspects like language and its nuances, acceptable manners within the culture, food, clothing, music, and perhaps most important of all ‘a sense of humour to be shared’ takes time to learn and accommodate. I feel that nearly all migrants and their children, to some extent, can relate well to this.
For myself, I would suspect that the poverty our family knew during the economic depression of the 1930s was in my own case one of the 'straps’ that prepared me for the poverty in Peru.
Learning new ways of living in another culture are the straps through which the new missionaries are taught to walk, to relate, to be accepted, to share faith, to be part of the adopted culture as a missionary of the Gospel.
Fr Leo Donnelly SSC first went to Peru in 1958. He is retired and living in Lima, Peru.
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