Should we give money to street people?

Want to start an argument? Ask a group of Sunday-going Christians if we should give money to panhandlers. I've been on both sides of the issue. There are many good reasons to not give money to street beggars. I was at a dinner with some folks from a liturgy conference once. The food was bounteous, and many of us had to take home doggie bags. As we were walking away from the restaurant, a woman in our group placed her bag on the sidewalk next to a beggar and wished him a good evening. In the few steps it took for him to realize the bag had food in it, he came rushing up to her to return it. He was looking for cash or something he could sell for cash.

People who work with the homeless (and even more who don't) will tell you of professional beggars who can clear several hundred dollars a day, tax free, with the right story in the right part of town. Some city governments will tell you it is your civic duty not to contribute to panhandlers because it encourages them to keep begging and discourages tourism. Drug and alcohol rehab counselors will tell you that contributing to panhandlers is simply contributing to their addiction. And some beggars, no doubt, are aggressive and dangerous. It wouldn't be prudent to interact with them in any fashion if you were by yourself. Some people walk around with McDonalds coupons or bus tokens to give to beggars, but those are refused as often as accepted. And they can also be sold for cash.

Lunch and a beer
That was more or less my thinking for a long time. Then one day, many years ago, a colleague and I were walking to lunch in a nice part of town. We were approached by a beggar who wanted a quarter. Without hesitating, my colleague pulled out his wallet and gave the guy a dollar. A little embarrassed that I hadn't responded as quickly, I fished out a dollar for the beggar as well.

During lunch, I asked my colleague, who is not a Christian, why he had given the beggar money. "It's lunchtime," said my friend. "And I can spare it."

"But what if the guy spends your money on booze?" I asked.

"It's not my money now," he said, lifting his glass of beer. "Besides, that's what I'm spending it on."

So I've changed my thinking. If I've got some spare money and someone asks me for a handout, I'll often give him something. I don't ask him if his hourly rate is higher than mine. I don't ask him what he's going to spend it on. My change in attitude led to an interesting relationship.

Sunday drivers
Shortly after the lunchtime incident, I was driving to church. I came to a red light, and there was a beggar with a sign, asking for a handout. I lowered the window and gave him a dollar. Next week, same thing. That went on for weeks, and then months, and then a couple of years. We'd chat for as long as the light would allow or until another driver waved a bill at him. Then one Sunday he asked me to pray for him. "I'm going to a job interview tomorrow," he said. "Good luck!" I said. "God bless," he said as the light changed.

I told some friends at church the story. I laughed about it a little. I didn't believe him. It sounded like he was rehearsing a new story for drivers that weren't as soft a touch as I.

But he wasn't there the next week. He hasn't been there since. Maybe he found a more profitable corner. Maybe he really got a job. I don't know if he changed, and it doesn't matter. I did.

Be a dreamer this Advent

I have one of those weight-lifter art books that nobody really reads. You know, the kind you get one of the kids to help you drag off the bookshelf onto the coffee table when company is coming over. Well, in this tome is a picture of a painting by a 15th-century painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, titled “Adoration of the Shepherds.” It’s a nativity painting in which the whole world is coming to adore the newborn Christ child. Seriously, this painting looks like it could have been inspired by the crowds at LAX the day before Thanksgiving. And every one of the throng is focused on Jesus. Everyone, that is, except Joseph.

Joseph is oblivious to the commotion, gazing far off into the distant sky, looking, in fact, in the opposite direction of his adopted son. He is depicted as an elderly man, and, when I saw the painting, I thought he’d already slipped off into dotage.

We know from Matthew’s gospel that Joseph is a man of dreams. And we know that a guy who dreams up the kind of stuff Matthew tells us about—angels appearing right and left with life-changing exhortations like “flee to Egypt”—isn’t a guy who only has three or four dreams in a lifetime. This guy lives in a dream.

How did Joseph get to be saintly? After all, when he found out Mary was pregnant, he planned to divorce her (Mt 1:19). Not shocking, but also not what you’d expect from a saint. It was his dreams that changed him. Because he was a dreamer, he was able to welcome Mary into his home and into his heart.

I took another look at the picture. In Ghirlandaio’s painting, Joseph is not an addled old man. He is a man of purpose. His hand rests firmly on a sarcophagus that serves as the Christ-child’s crib in the painting and a foreshadowing of his fate. That is to say, Joseph is grounded in the paschal mystery. With that foundation, he looks to the sky, far off in the distance, focused on what everyone else is too busy to see.

The challenge that Advent poses for us is to dream. And to teach our children to dream. But what are we to dream of? Joseph teaches us: A messenger of God, bearing good news.

The wicked stewardship problem

"Stewardship" has become the new beige. It goes with everything and seems pretty neutral.

Here's what I struggle with. If the parish belongs to the parishioners, how do we get them to take ownership? At the same time, how do we legitimately assert the authority of the bishop and the pastor to make "final decisions"? And, in the midst of all this, how do we ask parishioners to pay for the re-sources needed to accomplish a mission they don't always feel completely responsible for?

How do we even begin to solve the problems surrounding stewardship? If you are like me, you fantasize that there is "an answer" out there. Some parish or some person smarter or more experienced than I am must have solved all this already. But down deep, we know that really is a fantasy, don't we?

Wicked problems
These kinds of problems are what Horst Rittel, a pioneering theorist of design and planning and late professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called "wicked problems." Rittel figured out that many problems cannot be solved by "experts" dropping in and delivering a ten-point plan, even if they have experience in your specific area of difficulty. This is, in fact, the very type of solution most of us go looking for. We go to a workshop or buy a book or hire a speaker to just tell us what to do. The thing that makes your problem "wicked" is that there is no one solution. And each potential solution raises other problems. And, this is really key, each problem is unique.

Jim Conklin, author of Dialogue Mapping: Creating Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, went on to develop Rittel's ideas further. Conklin says wicked problems have these characteristics:

1. The problem is not understood until after formulation of a solution.
2. Stakeholders have radically different worldviews and different frames for understanding the problem.
3. Constraints and resources to solve the problem change over time.
4. The problem is never solved.

Don't you just hate that last one?

There is no "solution"
But think about it for a minute. Isn't the lack of a "solution" the very thing that makes the whole of parish life an encounter with grace? Stewardship is not a puzzle. There is no final answer. In the end, we are stewards of a mystery—a mystery of love. How do we solve that mystery? We can't. We can only enter into it.

Conklin says, "Because of social complexity, solving a wicked problem is fundamentally a social process. Having a few brilliant people or the latest project management technology is no longer sufficient." We might paraphrase that to say that because of the radical, loving relationship of the Father and the Son (in which we are immersed through the power of the Holy Spirit), solving a wicked problem is fundamentally an ecclesial process. Having a few brilliant theologians or stewardship experts is insufficient.

The answer is the community
In other words, stewardship is the responsibility of the entire parish community.

This means that all the multiple, complex, disjointed, busy, and distracted parts of the body of Christ must share a commitment to entering into the complex process of stewardship together. And they must share a commitment to love and support one another in that process. This won't "solve the problem." But it will bring us all more fully into the love of Christ.

[This was inspired by knowledge-management expert Jim McGee. See his post on "Solving puzzles or framing mysteries" for more information on wicked problems.]

Knowing Christ is our goal

When I was a kid, we didn’t have “tech.” If we did, I would have been identified as “tech-challenged.” I once tried to make a telephone out of two soup cans and string. Let’s just say AT&T’s R&D department has nothing to fear from me. I also bought a set of those X-ray glasses that were in the back of the old Superman comics. In the ad, the kid using them could see people’s bones. When I finally got them, they were two plastic rims, each encasing a single chicken feather. I guess it was supposed to look like you were seeing “bones” when you looked through the feathers.

My next door neighbor, on the other hand, two years younger than I, was a budding scientist. He built a volcano one summer. It was about four feet high and spewed rivers of colorful muck all over his father’s driveway. He also built a working telegraph, which put my tin-can phone to shame. We stretched the wires between our bedroom windows, and he’d send me Morse code messages. The fact that I didn’t know Morse code dimmed neither his enthusiasm nor my amazement.

I feel the same amazement when I see children text messaging their friends or tricking out their MySpace pages. While I struggle to set the alarm correctly on my cell phone, people who have to be “this high” to get on a Disney ride are practicing a tech wizardry that must surely be classified somewhere under the dark arts.

How do we know?

I suppose I should be more disturbed than amazed by this. After all, as an elder to these tech-savvy youngsters, I should be the one who, after long years of experience and study, has acquired a superior and even mysterious knowledge. But I don’t think of knowledge that way.

To think of knowledge as something I have, like a bottle of water, which I open up and pour over you at my discretion, isn’t really how knowledge works. That bottle of water is more like information

Knowledge on the other hand is more like the ocean. It’s not mine to give or to keep, but only to discover. I can help you discover it or not. But if you get anywhere near it, you’ll discover it with or without me. The more of us who dive in together, the more we will discover. The more we will know.

As catechists and teachers, our ministry is about discovering knowledge, not dispensing information. The General Directory for Catechesis says our goal is “to know [Christ’s] ‘mystery,’… the requirements…in his gospel message, and the paths that he has laid down for anyone wishing to follow him” (80).

If we discover a new facet of the mystery, we could try to let others know by using my soup-can phone. But the kids will have it posted on their MySpace pages before I can find my can opener. More than any previous generation, they’ve turned the idea of “teaching” on its head. They are teaching us elders what it is to be co-discovers of the Mystery of Christ. Just as the gospel requires. I think that’s amazing.

Expect September to be full of possibility

It was a warm September day more than 20 years ago, and I was late for my first day on the job. (I hadn’t lived in Twin Cities long enough to fully grasp the difference between I-35E and I-35W.) I didn’t have a key yet and had to ring the bell. The parish secretary answered the door, and she seemed to know who I was. She showed me around the building—a converted rectory—and eventually showed me to my office on the second floor. A real office with a window, a door that closed, and a typewriter on the desk. (Back in those days, personal computers were still too expensive for most church workers.)

She left me there, with instructions on how to use the intercom if I needed anything. I sat down on the armless swivel chair and stared at the wall. I remember two dominant feelings: creeping panic and a sense of unlimited possibility.

The panic eased with time, but the sense that anything is possible never has. Sure, it wanes and waxes, but it seems like every September there is renewed expectation and hope. Perhaps that comes from those early days in the parish. Our parish, like most, was a little drowsy in the summer. But come September, everyone was back from vacation, rested, and ready to go.

One of the first things I did to those unsuspecting-but-well-rested souls was start a liturgy committee. I’m afraid I conducted it a bit like a graduate course, showing off my new master’s degree and my book learning. They were a tolerant bunch of folks though, and together we read the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, and Music in Catholic Worship. It was only the third or fourth time I’d read the liturgy documents. It was the first time for most of them. We had a couple of English teachers on the committee who the bemoaned the grammar and sentence structure, especially of the Constitution. But no one failed to get excited by the promise those texts held. Ours was a Vatican II parish. The Council had only closed 15 years earlier, and everyone on the committee knew what liturgy was like before. While they weren’t ready to endorse every trend and fad coming down the pike, they were heart and soul committed to the primary aim of the Council: the full, conscious, and active participation of the people.

Well, that was a long time ago. Some say those days are over, the reform has been completed, and perhaps we should think about returning to some of the practices from before. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me.

The last liturgy committee I served on was just a few years ago. I was a parish volunteer, not the staff liaison. At my first meeting with them, I was the only one who grew up speaking English. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had read the liturgy documents. But we didn’t talk about that. We didn’t talk about Vatican II. And we really didn’t do much planning. We did talk a lot about what we loved about liturgy.

We also told stories about the best liturgies we’d ever participated in. And every story was about the participation of the folks. In every story, the people were heart and soul fully involved the priestly action of doing the liturgy. We all agreed we wanted more of that.

When he opened the Second Vatican Council, Blessed Pope John XXIII said, “The human family is on the threshold of a new era.” Maybe I’ve got too many “Septembers” under my belt, but it still feels to me like we are only on the threshold. Unlimited possibility lies ahead of us. Why would we ever think of going back?

Teaching as a sacrament

Fall is a good time to look forward. It is often a time of new beginnings, new hopes, and new quests. In looking forward to this year of publication, Religion Teacher’s Journal began by looking back. In the first issue, Neil Kluepfel, editor and publisher, wrote:

If the articles [in this first issue] have helped to reinforce your convictions to continue to strive to make our religion the most important thing in the lives of your students, then the magazine this month has achieved its objective.

As we looked at that first issue and at the mission Neil laid out for the magazine, we realized that the core of the catechetical ministry is teaching. However, it is not teaching so much in the pedagogical sense (although it often includes that). Primarily, catechesis is teaching in the sacramental sense.

What is a sacrament?
The more ancient word for “sacrament”—the word the apostles used—is “mystery.” The sacraments take on a slightly different meaning when we call them mysteries. We certainly “receive sacraments,” but we “encounter mysteries.” A mystery is something that draws us in, fascinates us, perhaps even frightens us. Sacraments are always about an encounter with the Mystery of Christ. And like any mystery—the mysteries of love, or art, or music, or nature—there is much to be revealed. It can take a lifetime.

Jesus never administered a sacrament. At least not in the sense of following a ritual text inside a church. Jesus is as sacrament. Jesus is mystery. When Jesus wanted to feed the first disciples, handing on small bits of himself to his nervous, confused, child-like followers, he told stories. He drew them into the mystery of himself with parables and signs. He taught.
Teaching is first of all a mission of mystery. Pope John Paul II said the first task of a catechist is to lead people to intimate communion with Christ. To even imagine what that might look like, and how to go about it, is both fascinating and frightening.

Perhaps we fail more than we succeed. Sometimes we are stiff and formulaic. Often we are not quite sure what we are doing. Sometimes we feel like we haven’t accomplished much. But we teach, nonetheless, because we are fascinated by the Mystery. And perhaps we succeed more than we think. Because we know that even on our worst day the sacrament happens.

As we begin this new year, Religion Teacher’s Journal joins you in looking forward to the future of teaching the faith, just as it did more than 40 years ago.

The Upper Room

Did you ever have one of those “strong driving wind” experiences in which the Spirit rushed upon you, and all of a sudden anything seemed possible? That happened to me recently. I met the new director of our local Catholic Charities office a couple of months ago. I was making small talk and asked him what his plans were for his new position. “To cut poverty in half in this county,” he answered. Well, yeah. I meant in this lifetime. But he meant within this lifetime. Actually, he meant within 15 years. I was startled. The trends are in the opposite direction. Child poverty is actually getting worse, up 12 percent since 2000. But he has a plan. And I believe it’s possible. That’s what the Spirit can do.

But it’s not just the Spirit that does these kinds of impossible things. It is the gifts of the Spirit. If you turn to page 20 [of the April / May 2007 issue of RTJ], you’ll see a listing of the gifts the Holy Spirit gives us. Now I know there are a lot of gifts, and I can even name most of them. I’ve taught classes about them. Nevertheless, something about seeing the gifts all lined up on the page that way—well, I was startled again. It’s like your favorite Christmas as a kid when you not only got all the stuff you asked for, but also the stuff you never dreamed your parents would ever get you.

So here’s a challenge for all of us who love kids. Let’s put some of those gifts to use. Let’s cut poverty in half in 15 years. Or choose your own impossible goal. But start working on something. All we need is a plan. Not sure where to start? Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, has some suggestions that can help us start putting our gifts to use:

1. Don’t feel entitled. Don’t assume a door is closed; push on it. Don’t assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today.
   
   
2. Assign yourself. If no one has given you a task or a job to do, assign yourself one. Take initiative. Be persistent.
   
   
3. Be honest and demand that those who represent you be honest. And don’t ever confuse morality with legality. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us, “Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not moral.” Don’t give anybody the proxy for your conscience.
   
   
4. Don’t be afraid of taking risks or of being criticized. An anonymous saying is, “If you don’t want to be criticized, don’t do anything, don’t say anything and don’t be anything.” Don’t be afraid of failing; it is the way you learn to do things right.
   
   
5. Listen to the sound of the genuine in yourself. If you cannot hear it in yourself, you will spend all of your life on the end of strings that somebody else pulls. Today, there are just so many noises and so many competing pulls on us. Find ways and times and spaces to be silent to listen to yourselves and to listen for other people.
   
   
6. Never think life is not worth living or that you can’t make a difference. Never give up.

Why I would get fired in the parish of the future

I don’t think I’d last long as a leader in the parish of the future. Here’s why.

I’d give the pastor more time off. Not exactly vacation days, but days away. At least two contiguous days (in addition to his day off) to work on his homily, the question of the week, and the pastor’s letter in the bulletin.

I’d ask the director of religious education and the school principal to work a lot more. Catechesis would happen year-round in the parish and school community. Instead of a week or two of “down time,” Christmas and Easter would be the busiest times of the year for catechetical ministers.

I’d change the receptionist’s schedule. Sunday would be a work day, and she’d be available to answer the phone, welcome new parishioner sign-ups, and direct people to the activities taking place on the parish campus. She would also be on hand for major liturgies in the parish, even if they happen at night or on the weekend. I’d also move her office. At least during the liturgies, the “front desk” would be right inside the main doors of the church.

I’d make the ushers networkers instead of seat-finders. Going to church on Sunday would be less like going to a play and more like a huge family reunion. No one seats you at a family reunion. Everyone greets you and introduces you to folks you haven’t met yet.

I’d stop charging for sacraments. I understand the budget implications. I understand many folks “use” the parish services without contributing on Sunday. But I don’t understand how we can say sacraments are a free gift of grace, and it will cost you $60 to have your baby baptized or $200 to get married.

I would make the director of the catechumenate the highest paid member of the staff. I’d do a national search and find the very best leader available. She would hire and manage the director of religious education, the school principal, and the director of liturgy. All catechetical and liturgical ministries of the parish would be oriented toward evangelization and catechesis.

I would end second collections, including those for the annual contribution to the diocesan structures. I would work with the parish council to devise a stewardship plan that includes all the charitable contributions to needs outside the parish.

I would ask everyone—pastor, staff, volunteer ministers, catechumens, the parish as a whole—to each have a set of goals for their ministry. I would ask them to devise a method for reaching their goals and a method for talking to each other about their progress on their goals.

I told you I’d get fired. Or maybe never hired in the first place. This vision of parish is, perhaps, too idealistic. Maybe it’s too threatening to some of the parish “pillars.” It could be too edgy for some communities.

It probably wouldn’t work in your parish because of your unique circumstances. It might not work in the neighboring parish either. The pastor probably would never go for it, not to mention the bishop. And who is going to fund all these grand ideas?

I guess that’s all true. But before I’m shown the door, I have to tell you the first thing I would implement in any given parish. I would declare a permanent, parish-wide ban on the sentence, “We’ve never done it that way before.” I would replace it with this sentence, which would be memorized by every child, confirmation candidate, and catechumen in the parish: “For human beings it is impossible, but not for god. All things are possible for God” (Mk 10:27).

[To read a spirited(!) reply to this post, click here.]

The Fire of Faith

The choir huddled together near a wood pile stacked higher than Jane’s head. “Holy Week,” she thought. “Yeah, right. What’s so holy about it?” Nothing had gone right since it started. She loved her sixth grade Sunday school class, but the only part of the Passion play they got right last Sunday was the mob scene. Not exactly a dramatic stretch for most of them.

Then she and Tom had had a fight about…what? She couldn’t remember. But he should know better. rehearsals for the kids, planning Easter dinner, trying to get caught up at work (and failing) so she could take Good Friday off. “Wouldn’t a good husband cut you a little slack?” she thought.

And then John had been a real pain all day. “Mom, do we have to go to Easter Vigil?” he whined. “It’s going to be cold.” He had begged her to join the seasonal choir with him. “It would be a lenten family thing,” he explained. “Like Father Thompson told us to do on Ash Wednesday.” She knew it had much more to do with Mary Beth Richards in the soprano section than Father Thompson, but whatever gets the kid to church.

Her own voice, unused to regular singing, was raw from practicing and from the rainy weather. The seminarian intern—-what was he thinking?—-had talked Father Thompson into starting the Vigil outside this year. John stood sullen at her side, alternating between pouting and stealing glances at Mary Beth.

“Dear friends in Christ,” said Father Thompson, “on this most holy night….” John stifled a yawn. Jane elbowed him, and gave him her best “DON’T YOU DARE” look. “We ask this through Christ our Lord.” Boom! Boom! Boom! Someone was pounding a drum. A torch appeared, snaking its way above the heads of the crowd.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Jane realized they were too close to the wood and began to inch backward. The torch bearer tossed the flame into the wood. Woosh! Flames lit up the night. Boom! Boom! Boom!

Jane grabbed her son’s arm to pull him back, but he wouldn’t move. He stared into the flame, his face glowing in the fire light. “Wow!” he said to the fire. “Is that what God’s like?”

“Holy Week,” thought Jane. “Holy indeed.”

The Sixth Station

When she saw him fall, she tried to call out but could only whisper. Her throat was raw and her voice spent from earlier shouting his name against the mob. “Barabbas,” they had yelled in unison, drowning out her frantic pleas.

Then Simon called out to the guards. They pulled him from the crowd to help, and she tried to follow. The guards pushed her back, and she stumbled and fell, just as he had.

From the dirt, she remembered this was how she had first encountered him. She had been trying to reach through another crowd, crawling on the ground, intending only to touch his sandal or his cloak. Somehow, in all the jostling, the people pressing round him, he’d known her touch. He turned and looked directly at her, down in the dirt, her tunic stained and caked. She was embarrassed, ashamed to be in public, ashamed for him to see. She buried her head in her hands and wept. But he would not take his eyes off her. He knelt down and cupped her chin in his hand. She looked up and saw his face.

It was unlike any face she’d ever seen. It was ordinary and plain and unremarkable. And at the same time it was completely extraordinary, a most remarkable face. She couldn’t stop staring. Long after he’d gone, she would still see his face as if it were inches in front of her, looking back, deep into her soul.

As Simon shouldered some of the weight off of him, he turned toward her once again. The pain she saw was too much for her. Blood dripped into his eyes and off his chin; sweat and tears mixed with the dirt of the road, making his face into a gruesome mask. And still somehow, it was his face, that face that had stared back at her on the road to Capernaum. He reached out to help her up, but the guards lashed him and pushed him forward. The crowd cheered and urged him on with taunts and jeers.

She tore a piece from her new tunic, the first she’d had in years that was not stained with her own blood, and charged after the mob. She slipped under the guard’s arm as he tried to stop her and reached out to touch him once again. But this time, standing, face to face. She wanted him to see—see what she’d become because of him. Healed. Whole.

She took the unstained scrap torn from her dress and wiped the blood and dirt from his face, praying she could stop the pain for him as he had for her. As the guards pushed the procession onward, she held the bloodstained rag in her hands and wept, still seeing his face, inches in front of her.

Cold coffee, burning hearts

I got my start in professional ministry in Minnesota. The year I moved there, it snowed on Labor Day. My sense of dread at being snowbound during what the rest of the country calls “Fall” was mitigated by this saving grace: I would surely have scores of eager parishioners who would turn out for an adult education series in which I could show off all the learning that earned me a newly-minted master’s degree. What else were folks going to do in those long, dark winters?

Well. Let’s just say I was the one who had a lot to learn. I spent many winter nights trying to warm the parish hall with a budget-conscious thermostat, an industrial-sized pot of coffee, and the body heat of two or three good souls. The pastor, who’d been around the ecclesial block a few times, had the good sense to hold forth only on Sunday mornings between masses. The attendance was respectable, but even he never had what you’d call a “turnout.”

This is the image many of us have of adult formation. It was in the face of this image that eight years ago the bishops of the united states said:

There are many obstacles to adult catechesis, many challenges to overcome to bring the living word of god to the adults in our faith communities. But just like the disciples after Jesus revealed himself to them, our hearts burn within us to proclaim the good News of the reign of God. We are committed to this plan and are willing “to exercise utmost courage and patience” as we implement it. We move ahead full of hope, knowing this vision of adult faith formation can become reality. (Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us, 181, 182)

I want to believe, I really do. I have, at times, been hopeful, patient, maybe even courageous. I’ve also been frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged over the years as I poured countless gallons of undrunk coffee down the drain.

I’ve heard all the reasons adults don’t show up for formation classes. We all have. Say them with me:

• We live in a post-Christian society.
• There are many more entertainment options now.
• Parents are busier than they used to be.
• There are more single parent homes than there used to be.
  

Okay, okay. All true, I suppose. But I walked into borders bookstore last November, and in the magazine section, at eye level among Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated, were three religiously-themed magazines. No big deal you say? The magazines were Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Featured on their covers were, respectively, a cross, a rosary, and a renaissance painting of Christ. A whole lot of post-Christian, entertainment-saturated, busy parents must be reading those kinds of stories.

Newsweek, et. al., are not evangelizing. They are selling stories. if faith stories did not sell, they’d dump them and sell other stories. So how is it that the secular media can sell faith stories and those of us with faith cannot? Perhaps we disciples have forgotten how to put the news in good News.

I was at a diocesan religious education conference the day after I saw the magazines at borders. At the closing mass, the local bishop gave a standard closing homily. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. And then he ended with a story. It was a story of a very personal and deep loss he had suffered. He told us why, and how, in the face of such loss, he still had faith. The assembly was rapt. Some were in tears. All of us were formed in our faith in that moment.

That bishop’s sharing of his personal faith struggle was exactly the kind of courage the conference of bishops promised us in Our Hearts Were Burning. It was a new model (or renewed model) of how to teach faith. That’s news. Good news.

Actual Grace

Sister Paul Mary turned her piece of chalk sideways and slashed a long, wide swath of white across the middle of the blackboard. “We’re all born with original sin,” she said.

Then she rubbed a big black felt eraser back and forth until only a faint shadow of white dust remained. “Baptism washes away our sin,” she said. She drew a bottle and, turning her chalk sideways again, filled it in neatly with white. “Baptism fills us with grace.”

To my second grade eyes, the grace looked exactly like the sin, except there seemed to be less of the grace.

Pictures teach louder than words, especially for children. I learned that grace was rather limited and controlled while sin was apparently unlimited and uncontained. Grace had to be constantly replenished as you used it up to wipe away the unrelenting sin. Never enough grace. Always too much sin.

This past October, we were taught a new lesson in grace. Charles Carl Roberts IV walked into a schoolhouse and slashed a long, wide swath of darkness across the Amish community. After releasing the boys and adults, he threatened to kill the ten remaining girls. The girls responded by asking him to pray with them. A picture of grace.

When he refused, 13-year-old Marian Fisher stepped up to him and said, “Shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” Marian, full of grace.

After the madman shot the girls, killing five and severely wounding the others, the grandfather of two sisters killed told an interviewer he bore no anger toward the killer’s family. And he had forgiven the killer. “How is that possible?” asked the reporter. “Through God’s help,” replied the grandfather.

After shooting the girls, Roberts killed himself. There were 75 mourners at his funeral. Half of them were Amish. The Amish have received over a million dollars in donations since the shootings. They have pledged some of it to help Roberts’ wife and his three children. Overflowing grace.

The Catechism says grace “escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith.” Perhaps it can also be known in the pictures of grace we see. Pictures such as the Amish give us. Pictures of unlimited, uncontainable, unrelenting, almost unbelievable grace.

Happy hour

Kalamata olives. And figs. You have to have figs. Fresh, if they’re in season, but dried will work. You need a ratio of about three to one or two to one (olives to figs). I don’t really know for sure. I do it by taste. You put those in a food processor. I suppose you could hand mince them, but I don’t. Then a little balsamic vinegar—the good stuff, not the cheap supermarket brand. And, depending on your mood, maybe a little minced garlic, maybe a little minced thyme. Fresh thyme. Always fresh. I grow it on my deck.

Then you process this down to a chunky paste. If it seems a little dry, add some olive oil. Stir it around. Taste it. Add stuff. Get it just right. Now what you want to do is scrape this out into a fancy dish. Not the good china, but not a cereal bowl either. Maybe that little pottery piece you bought at the art fair last summer and haven’t used since. Then you need some crackers. Not the square kind with salt that you used crunch up into tomato soup when your Mom let you stay home “sick.” And not fancy, delicate things that come in round metal canisters at Christmas time. Just a box of good, sturdy water crackers. Put those in a fancy dish too. Or maybe a small basket lined with a napkin. Cloth, not paper. And certainly not a paper towel!

Ten minutes. That’s about all it takes. Once everything’s ready, pour a little libation. In a fancy glass or cup. Even if it’s just water. Use water from a glass bottle. Pour it into a nice glass. Do it right.

Now take all this somewhere nice. Not in front of the TV Maybe outside on the deck if weather permits. Or by a window in a favorite chair. And then enjoy. Have joy. Do not answer the phone. Do not answer e-mail. Do not read the newspaper. Maybe listen to music. Or, share some conversation about the day if you have someone to share with. The nice stuff. Save the bad stuff for later. Unless it was a really bad day. Then, okay.

That’s my plan for the end of the workday. Not everyday, but a lot of days. Enough days that I miss it when I don’t do it. It’s kind of a master plan for me. A happy hour template. A reminder that, at the end of the day, life should be a joy. Maybe happy hour is not for you. For a friend of mine, it’s breakfast. For you it might be dessert. Whatever, we all need a plan.

Usually we make plans to keep ourselves out of trouble. But making a plan like this—a plan for reveling, for soaking up the goodness, for joy—won’t do that. In fact, it will get us into trouble. That’s kind of the point. We want to stand counter to the culture of scarcity and despair. We want to look happy. We want to be happy in a world that awash in misery. But that makes us stand out. Sometimes it makes us seem odd. Sometimes it gets us into trouble.

I went up for Communion at Mass last Sunday—the church’s happy hour plan—and no one looked happy. Not the presider, not the ministers, not the assembly, not even the musicians who were hymning us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

Maybe they were worried about something. Maybe it was a really bad day. Maybe they didn’t have the right ingredients on hand. But I rather think that maybe they just hadn’t planned on being joyful that day.

Probably just need more practice. I’d recommend they start with kalamata olives.

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In the name of faith

I had to sign my name the other day on one of those electronic card readers. My name was illegible even by my standards. There’s something about the angle and feel of those screens and non-pen pens that makes signing your name an act of faith.

Staring at my receipt, trying to imagine how the clerk, who reminded me of my mother, could let me get away with such lousy penmanship, I remembered a little girl from a parish I used to work in. We were celebrating the rite of sending for election, and she was a candidate for baptism that year. The other catechumens each came forward and signed their name. When it was Rosita’s turn, we had to pull the Book of the Elect (which was bigger than she was) off the table and hold it low for her to reach.

Later that day, she sat in the cathedral with the other catechumens waiting for the Rite of Election to begin. One of the ushers began to chat with her and asked her how her day was going. “I wrote my name in a big book!” she told him.

“Really?” he answered. “And are you are getting baptized at the Easter Vigil?”

It was the first time I had ever seen her so quiet. Her body tensed up. She took a deep breath, raised her shoulders up and down, and stared down at her hands. I realized she was scared to death of what lay ahead of her. I wanted to comfort her, or I wanted her parents to, or somebody to just do something so this usually bubbly child would not be so afraid. But then I wondered what any of us would say to her. Hadn’t we asked her to put her name on the line? Hadn’t we asked her—urged her—to embrace the cross?

The liturgy began, and eventually the bishop would ask us, the community of faith, if we were willing put our own names on the line by supporting Rosita and the other catechumens.

Of course we would, wouldn’t we? But I was thinking it over. I was thinking about Rosita and what this decision would cost her, what she would have to die to. Sure, I believe St. Paul and the baptism-into-his-death-so-that-we’ll-have-eternal-life story. Really I do. But it’s never just that simple and easy. That “death” clause is for real. Could I really ask Rosita to just sign up for all this on some big act of faith? Most days, I have trouble living up to what I signed up for myself.

Moment of truth time. The bishop looked out at the assembly. “And now I speak to you, my brothers and sisters.”

He wanted to know if we were ready to support the catechumens. If we were ready to be there for them. If we were ready to teach them how to die to themselves and live for Christ. If we were ready to do what we signed up for.

I could have bailed. I could have said nothing. No one would know. Or I could have just mouthed the words. It’s just words, right. It’s not like Rosita is ever going to actually knock on my door and ask for my help. Will she?

“WE ARE,” we all thundered. I am. I will. That’s something I can put my name to.

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