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I want to thank all of you who wrote to me after I posted my Good Friday thoughts. It was by the far the largest number of responses I’ve ever received to a posting. I want you to know that it does not make me happy to know that you also feel speechless before our current state of affairs in the U.S. I was rather hoping you would have the words that I find myself lacking! But, at the same time, I appreciate knowing I’m not the only one feeling robbed of language to engage constructively at present. That I’m not the only one looking for models of what meaningful interaction with elected officials might look like…what meaningful interaction with each other might look like.
The back and forth of emails that we’ve shared since Good Friday made this past week’s feast of St. Catherine of Siena pop off the calendar for me in a new way. I’ve read Catherine’s writing before. If you teach in a Dominican school, it’s a feast you celebrate! So, I’ve even preached on Catherine’s writing before. Wrote a paper on her as part of my doctoral work. But for some reason, in light of our recent conversations, many of her well-known quotes seem even more striking than they have in the past:
- “Preach the truth as if you had a million voices. The world is lost through silence.”
- “To the servant of God, every place is the right place, and every time is the right time.”
- “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
- “It is impossible to fulfill the law concerning love for Me, God Eternal, apart from the law concerning love for your neighbors.”
- “We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.”
- “Love does not stay idle.”
- “Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.”
And then, of course, her most well-known quote of all: “If you are what you should be, you will set [the world] ablaze.”
So, what should we be? Me? You? Us together? How do we find our words again?
This past week, I found myself hanging out inside Catherine’s Dialogues in preparation for Saturday’s preaching on John 14:6 for Word.OP.org. Her language is quite antiquated, and then the online version I had access to had replaced every “th” with the letters “di.” Not sure how that happened, but oh well. Made for a challenging read but a worthwhile one nonetheless. Sometimes when we go into our tradition and read from those who’ve lived through not only plagues and wars but some very corrupt regimes in the past, it puts things in perspective. Not a perspective I thought I’ve ever feel necessary to acquire because of historical events in my own time. Yet a perspective all the same. We are stronger when we know we are not the first people ever to have to go through something, but come from a long line of courageous people who may have some words for us.
I also found strangely encouraging this past week a conversation between Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat—two people I don’t ordinarily think of as being in conversation with each other but who apparently are on a regular basis, and here model a spacious, curious, good-humored sort of dialogue with one another where words seem to be doing their purpose in the world. My sister sent it to me and I’d invite you to listen to it as well as an example of the kind of bridge building I reference in my preaching for Saturday (May 3).
All of the above gave me so much encouragement that I actually did something I hardly ever do which is make phone calls to my representative and senators on one current issue that means a good deal to me: the funding of public media. In the midst of all that is going on, that hardly seems like the one that should have forced me to call Congress. But it was good practice for doing more. If you know me well, you know that I hate talking on the phone. And if it means calling elected officials, I hate it even more. I'd prefer to email, but all the studies say email is considered less weighty than calling. Fortunately Protect My Public Media made it super easy for me to do this. Basically I entered my address and then they did all the work, linking me up in one phone call to each of the offices I needed to call and giving me talking points. You would find it easy also. I promise. Now maybe I'll find the guts and time to do it more often on other issues as well.
This coming week I head to Canada to work with the wonderful Catholic Independent Schools of Vancouver. I’ve worked with this community multiple times now and I cannot tell you just how excited I am to see them again. From there I’ll be heading to St. Louis for Aquinas Institute’s graduation. We’ve got eight amazing catechists graduating from our Masters of Pastoral Studies program with a concentration in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I celebrate their many achievements! They are already doing great things in the world but are about to do a whole lot more. And then I’ll head to Boston and into New Hampshire to work with pastors from the United Methodist Foundation of the Northeast. More really good people.
Let us continue to build relationships wherever we can, always looking for common ground amidst our differences and across our borders. Let us continue to find words to talk about what means most to us—holding fast to our deepest values, curious about why others hold what they hold and see what we don’t see. Every place is the right place and every time is the right time to love our neighbor.