Browning Issues Letter On AIDS
Episcopal News Service. September 10, 1987 [87188]
NEW YORK (DPS, Sept. 10) -- I am now reading their names nearly every morning on the obituary page of the newspaper. Sometimes there is a photo with a young, bright face looking out at me. The words are always similar: "died after a long illness... surviving are mother and father." More often, now, the account of death is more honest and explicit: "died due to AIDS related complications." I read this in cities across the country --- Charlotte, NC, Evansville, Ill, St. Louis. And, I read it in cities overseas --- Geneva, London and Osaka. Persons living with AIDS are from a wide spectrum of society: bankers, artists, teachers, clergy and even the founder of a conservative political action group. The recurring accounts of new born children with AIDS strikes a deep chord of empathy as well as grief.
The suffering of each of these persons physically, mentally and spiritually is incalculable. The personal search for a cure or relief is often frantic and ultimately fruitless and costly. Parents and friends react in varying degrees of horror, panic, fear and shame. Some rise to heroic compassion and service. The physical pain is joined by social ostracism and the politicization of the condition. The agony of the person living with AIDS, family, friends and loved ones, goes beyond dispassionate telling.
No matter how deep and traumatic may be the suffering of persons living with AIDS, we cannot measure the anguish of those countless millions in high risk groups who are living with the fear of AIDS. The five or more years incubation period of the disease-causing virus leaves these millions caught in a wasteland of fear and guilt. The daily news litany that there are now more than 51,000 cases of AIDS reported in 112 countries, that about 36,000 case have been reported in the United States alone, feeds the uncertainty and sense of hopelessness. Every rash is potentially Kaposi's sarcoma. Every cold is pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. And, how do you answer the not-too-subtle questions on life and medical insurance forms? Or, what will be the response to the "routine" medical examination for that new job?
The feature writer, writing with moving compassion of the life and death of the founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), wrote that "[he] was one more reminder of the silent presence of gay men and women throughout the political world, most of them still frightened of being discovered, years after the gay rights movement was born."
For the homosexual person, the closet may be a living hell. However, for some it may be the only way to survive in a hostile community. For these people, who don't confront others, don't blab about their private lives, who just hope people will leave them alone, these, too, are the people living with AIDS.
Then, there are the care givers. These are the thousands of professionals and volunteers who run hospices, staff hotlines, provide counselling services, conduct fund raisers, provide comfort and companionship. They give countless hours of their time, they give generously to provide the environment of dignity to the dying, they give that little bit of peace that passes understanding. Here, too, are the people living with AIDS. But, here, too, are the heroes. Without guile or prejudice, they provide a healing ministry that no laboratory-produced vaccine can achieve. They give total, selfless love.
The healing ministry of the care givers is joined and supported by the prayer givers. The prayer givers, too, through their intercessions share in the pain and suffering of persons living with AIDS. Through their prayer life, they, too, become people living with AIDS. In a unique way, the prayer givers enter into the lives of those living with AIDS, serving as channels of God's healing and comforting presence.
In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen has written that "The minister is the one who can make [the] search for authenticity possible, not be standing on the side as a neutral screen or an impartial observer, but as an articulate witness of Christ, who puts his own search at the disposal of others. This hospitality requires that the minister know where he stands and whom he stands for, but it also requires that he allow others to enter his life, come close to him and ask him how their lives connect with his.
"Nobody can predict where this will lead us, because every time a host allows himself to be influenced by his guests he takes a risk not knowing who they will affect his life. But it is exactly in common searches and shared risks that new ideas are born, that new visions reveal themselves and that new roads become visible."
A great deal has been written about AIDS and many more words will be penned before this plague is banished. A great deal of controversy will swirl around the eddies of human fear, ignorance and insensitivity. The debates will rise and ebb about education, public funding for research and medical care. But, my dear friends, through it all, I pray that we never forget the human dimension. Let us not lose sight of each person who lives with AIDS, those who love and care for them, those who live constantly within its deadly embrace. Let each of us never forget nor shirk our ministry as care givers or prayer givers.