Watching Everything Become Fragile and Rigid at the Same Time

I've followed several threads about the current uproars at Stuebensville and the unfortunate rude emails directed at a singular person that revealed another person's poor thinking and even poorer understanding of the Gospel. Those who haven't followed it, it's not the point of this piece, but it's easy to google.

I concede, I followed, until I realized, it was a form of dark joy. It's fun to blast what we know to be stupid, misguided, foolish, rude, vulgar, insane and ignorant, particularly when it is directed at an individual we know and care about. I followed the blogger and sometimes shared pieces. Something made me pull back. There is a danger of engaging in a sin against charity, even when dealing with those who are uncharitable. It's a dicey thing to discuss.

The lack of kindness and generosity of spirit we receive, often allows us to think, we're justified in an equally angry response, whether the issue is politics, religion, or any other topic of import. The problem with this reflexive response to the words of others (even sinful evil words given without charity or presumption of good faith), is it makes us like the one who attacked us, and that's not the goal in any exchange of anyone who professes themselves to be kind. It's not what Christ instructs us to do either. The goal is to be like Christ to the one who does not see Christ, not in themselves, and not in us.

Turning the other cheek doesn't mean being a chump, but neither does it mean triumphing at our moral superiority of understanding. Being a peace maker, converting hearts requires not doing what would seem justifiable and reasonable in response to hate, in response to rudeness, in response to ignorance, in response to foolishness, in response to injustice. It's so easy to add to the darkness, and think this is deserved darkness but Jesus does not return the insults, He does not return the violence with violence. He offers no words of rebuke to those who in no way are righteous in their acts or words.

With scandal after scandal breaking, with injustice after injustice being exposed, it's easy to get caught up in what feels like righteous wrath at all the blindness, all the foolishness, and all the sins covered up and ignored. In social media, having a feral moment of dark joy is almost reflexive, because we want to defend our friends, pur faith, our values. We want to be on the side of angels, we want to be right and we want to be perceived as such by those friends, those fellow warriors in whatever battle we might find ourselves. We want to draw mental swords and lock in battle, cutting away at all the chaff, but God allows the wheat and chaff in each of our souls to grow up together, the weeding He will do at the end.

The reality is Followers of Christ neither punch up or punch down. They diffuse, they deflect, they respond with the unexpected grace of charity. It's a shock to the soul, like sun bursting through the clouds on a winter day, providing an unexpected shaft of warmth, or a crocus revealing beauty in a drab landscape.

We're to be that shock, but that requires we stop reveling in the lack of warmth, lack of beauty, and lack of wisdom, or celebrating our own coziness in the faith in relation to others' both splinters and planks. We also don't get to quit, wash our hands and go home.

Jesus wanted even the Pharisees to understand, and kept offering them the opportunity if they willed to listen, He came to their dinners knowing they wanted Him there for their own reasons. God invites us knowing we have alternative motives as well. Love breaks through, because it's much more shocking to respond with kindness and mercy, than with vitriol, cleverness and insults especially if when we think the person brought this upon themselves.

It's not easy, because bitterness and outrage is so much more intuitive, so much more reasonable and seemingly right. We might think, then how do we respond? How do we react? What do we do when faced with ignorance, foolishness, waste, cruelty, malice, misguided ideology, blind loyalty, hypocrisy and multiple sins beyond what we would have thought?

We must keep engaging not because it is easy, not because we will win friends (we'll probably lose some), but because we're called to present what we know to be true even if it is rejected.Offer the theology of an alternative perspective with all the love we can muster. Our job is to inform, not convince, and to feed, knowing there will be extra even after we distribute all that we have, even if all we began with were two loaves and five fishes. Our job is to lower the nets where Christ instructs us to, and not to insist that if people ignore Christ, that we can either pull down columns of fire or decide we will no longer engage. We do not get the luxury of not being involved because we are our brothers' keeper. At a time when everything seems both fragile and rigid at the same time, we're to strengthen and bind, to heal and soothe the wounds of the world.

Mercy, even in the face of ignorance, that's what Christ on the Cross offered. Followers of Christ, must do no less

Mercy, even in the face of rejection, that's what Christ on the Cross offered. Followers of Christ, must do no less.

Mercy even if it is not recognized as such, that's what Christ on the Cross offered. Followers of Christ can do no less.

A Tale of Two Reactions

This past weekend, I was in Southbend, Indiana at the 25th reunion of my graduating class from Saint Mary's College.  In trying to get back, I found myself trapped at the airport.  While waiting for someone to show up at the gate to give us directions and a touch of hope of leaving, I spied a classmate I hadn't had a chance to visit with, and we struck up a conversation. 

"So M---, tell me what's going on in your life."  I asked.
She told me about her job, her family, how much she enjoyed the reunion. Then the dreaded return question, "So do you have any family?"

I'd come to know the question would start a firestorm response and it did.  "10 kids?" "You have TEN KIDS?" By this point, other people waiting for the plane were staring.  A graduate clearly back for his ten year said, "That's insane." 

It was 5:30 in the morning, our plane had been delayed by three hours during which I could have been sleeping.  "Thanks." I said.  Not my best witness point I admit.

"No really.  That's so..." he searched for a word, "Catholic."  He quickly added, "I have two."  and put his book up over his face so I'd know the conversation was over. 

Another woman looked at her husband, "We would have liked to have more..." her voice trailed off.  Clearly the loss of not having haunted her. I'd had a conversation with another woman that weekend who pined for more but was refused.   There were echo memories of pain from the loss of having more to love everywhere and I felt like a giant reminder, not always the good kind. 

Today, I went to buy donuts for my son celebrating his summer birthday with his class.  After purchasing three dozen, the man behind me whistled and said, "You're in charge of the party huh?" I smiled and said it was for my son's 7th grade to mark his birthday.  He congratulated me.  "How many children do you have?" he asked.  I was startled to get the question in this context.  "I have ten." I said and steeled myself for the reaction. 

I wish I knew how to write what he said, it was "Praise God" but in Arabic.  I asked him what it meant.  He explained that he was Muslim and from Turkey and children were a gift from God. He repeated saying "Praise God." multiple times and "Ten children!" in response.  I thanked him and took the donuts to my kids Catholic school. 

It's not that having one or ten children is the thing, but the reaction to the existence of children is the thing. How is it that in a theoretical bastion of Catholicism, my having ten seems more shocking to the everyday sensibilities of strangers than when standing in line to buy pastries in secular Gaithersburg, Maryland?

It was then that I was struck that if we really want to live a Catholic life, we have to stand out, be part of the world but not of it, and that God knowing I like to be liked, determined I needed to have this many.  Despite loving attention, despite loving to talk, I would balk at witness that singled me out, so God devised a means where by I could not escape witnessing. But standing out is hard, particularly when you go to places where you don't expect to stand out. 

That's so....Catholic.  Really?  To me, the woman who says she has seven and wears a smile even as she mourns the loss of one of her children, this is so Catholic, the woman who stands in the pew near me in mass and sings her heart out even as I know it is partially breaking for having to touch on the brokenness in her life, a divorce and a starting over, this is so Catholic, and the woman who soldiers on, gracious and to my mind, tolerating the intolerable as she repeats over and over again how she is not married and has no children but does so to each new eager face who asks with equal graciousness of spirit, this is Catholic. So Catholic is not a number of children or how many holy cards I have in my purse, or how many decades you say, it is how you treat others and why you treat others as you treat them, because you hold to love, to Christ first.  What is so Catholic is not the outward appearance of a life, but the inward sacrifice of a life lived.