HerbEly

Holy Thursday: the Prayer that We Should have Said

Last night my wife and I joined in our Parish Holy Thursday Mass. We heard and then celebrated Jesus’ washing his disciple’s feet as related in John 13. We washed one another’s feet as a symbol of our service to one another. We prayed for everyone who provides service to the parish including our pastor, staff, religious educators, lectors and Eucharistic ministers, social ministers, maintenance volunteers, and those who serve simply by joining in prayer with us. We followed the Bread and Wine into a place of repose and knelt in reverence and worship.

The evening was quiet and inspiring for both of us.

This morning we talked briefly about the fact very few of us would return to the parish to perform service. Most of us would go out into the world and perform some kind of service. Our friend John will go back to his print shop and prepare documents for his customers. Charlie will use his carpentry skills to help people maintain their homes. My wife will teach children the skills they will need in their futures. Our four grown children will; 1) write an instructional video in medical Spanish; 2) construct buildings for Radford University students and faculty; 3) serve law students out of the Georgetown dean's office; and 4) teach music to inner city middle school students. Doctors will heal patients and financial planners will help their clients provide for their families and retirements.

Last night we were inspired by all the prayers we said for those who perform service inside the parish. This morning we wished that we had also prayed for everyone who would perform a service in their places of work or homes. None of these people will benefit from a prayer that could easily have been added to the liturgy.

By any calculation the overwhelming majority of service done by our parishioners throughout the week will be done outside the confines of the parish walls.

I suggest this prayer as an addition to the Holy Thursday liturgy:

“Jesus, Joseph and Mary, please be with us as we return to our homes and places of work. Help us to remember that our work is a form of service, that every customer, boss, and coworker is a child of God, and that our work is an opportunity to create a better world, one aligned with your wishes. Help us to find a balance among work, worship, community service and holy leisure. Help us to continue our service when we return to our families in love.”

Book Review: On-the-Job-Prayers

    Ellen Wulfhort’s story on “workaholism” prompted me to write this short review of William D. Thomson’s On-The-Job Prayers. Small enough to be tucked in a briefcase, glove compartment, toolbox, or top center desk drawer, this book has one hundred brief reflections on spirituality of work, a quote from scripture, and a short prayer. Each page can be read as a meditation in less time than needed for a coffee break. The index provides quick references for work related issues such as “Monday mornings,” happiness,” and “excellence.”
    Later this weekend, I plan a post on how work can be an addiction and a spiritual path to finding balance on one’s life.  For now, here is an extract

Lay Ministry: Bishops Shoot Selves in Other Foot

    The Bishops unintentionally shot themselves in the foot when they published their document on Lay Ministry. By focusing on the ministry laity perform inside the parish, the bishops ignored parishioners who hear the words of the dismissal:

"Let us go forth in joy to love and serve the Lord."

and return to their homes, jobs and communities for the coming week. From this perspective, at least 99 percent of lay ministry is done outside the ecclesial structure. The document Coworkers in the Vineyard of the Lord is subtitled "A Resource for Guiding the Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry."
    Now it appears that the Bishops have shot themselves in the other foot by insulting the work of the 99%. In this WaPo story on the Bishop’s effort to foster religious vocations. Mishelle Boorstein writes:   

"Fishers of Men," a 20-minute video released this month by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, presents priests as handsome and heroic, appearing in scenes of war and civil rights marches that are contrasted with the image of bored-looking people riding an escalator to meaningless jobs.

Are the Bishops really recruiting young people by saying “Be happy. Don’t go out and do the same meaningless, boring jobs as your parents”?

Are Leaders Always Out of Touch?

    Peggy Noonan’s column for today touches on a favorite theme of mine. She writes about the 1947 atrocities that followed Pakistan’s independence from India.

    Mountbatten and Nehru and Jinnah were brilliant men who'd not only experienced a great deal; they'd done a great deal, and yet they did not know that the Subcontinent--which each in his own way, and sometimes it was an odd way, loved--would explode in violence, that bloodlust would rule as soon as the Union Jack was lowered.
...
    The leaders of the day did not know that terrible violence was coming because of what I think is a classic and structural problem of leadership: It distances. Each of these men was to varying degrees detached from facts on the ground. They were by virtue of their position and accomplishments an elite. They no longer knew what was beating within the hearts of those who lived quite literally on the ground.

Dismissal Ratio – an Index of Parish Effectiveness

     Here is a quote from he April 2006 Initiatives Newsletter:

“If you happen to be a layperson who is serious about faith, chances are the church will enlist you to teach Sunday school, serve on a committee or lead worship. "Ministry" happens within the bounds of the congregation or denomination (the "church gathered," as R. Paul Stevens from Regent College terms it). Little attention is invested in the "church dispersed." Rarely is daily work recognized as ministry.
Rare, too, is the teaching that all work is service to God.”

The quote is taken from an article  by by Wally Kroeker in Our Faith, a journal sharing previously published materials from a Mennonite/Anabaptist perspective. It struck me as absolutely true of Catholics.

Initiatives goes on with a quote from Russell Shaw:

Vatican II, says Russell Shaw, “made it overwhelming clear” that a lay person’s responsibility “is primarily [an] apostolate that  carries the gospel out into the world.” Yet since Vatican II, lay ministry inside the Church has  received most of the emphasis. Internal “lay ministry is a good thing,” says Shaw, author of Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church (Requiem Press [2005], PO Box 7, Bethune, SC  29009; $14.95). But lay ministry within a Church organization is not the same thing as the Christian’s “right and duty to participate in the mission of the church,” on the job, around the home and in the neighborhood.

Bloodless Child Sacrifice

    As we sat in church Sunday morning and heard story of Abraham and Isaac many of us wondered: "What kind of God would ask a father to take a knife and sacrifice his own son?" Good question – one which most homilists avoid. If we place the question in a modern context and interpret the word sacrifice broadly, we find that the gods we now serve are deceptive and harsher than Abraham’s God.

    Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College has posted Soren Kierkegaard’s magnificent Panegyric on Abraham Any serious reflection on Abraham and Isaac should start there. Suffice it to say 1) that child sacrifice was a custom in he ancient Middle East; 2) that Abraham was trusting a God who had promised and performed miracles over seven decades of Abraham’s life; and 3) that his story would make him the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

    As the husband and father of teachers, I hear many stories about children and their parents. Many of these are stories about children who are hostile and unmotivated. Teachers quickly learn that the classroom behavior reflects the previous night’s experience at home. Children do not become angry, tired or upset just from stepping into the classroom. They carry these attitudes from home.

    Parents do not, as a rule, deliberately send a child to school angry, tired or upset. They overlook a child’s needs because they are preoccupied serving some other purpose. This may be job, career, power, pleasure, possession of great wealth or some other form of perceived satisfaction. When purposes such as these interfere with a parent’s primary responsibility they become what St. Ignatius called “inordinate attachments”.  The late psychologist addressed the deceptive and powerful course of attachments in his book Addiction and Grace.

    Parents can easily rationalize ignoring a child’s needs by saying to themselves that some sacrifices have to be made in order to meet a deadline or serve a client. The promises of power, pleasure and possession are deceptive. Many of them never know that they are bloodlessly sacrificing thier children's future on the altar of success.

    Teachers do not know what concerns are driving a parent’s behavior. They only know that the challenge of teaching an ill-prepared child.

    Abraham took Isaac up Mount Moriah knowing what he had to do and trusting that Yahweh would somehow make good on His promise. Abraham knew what he was about to do. Parents serving the gods of career, power or other attachments do not consciously know that they are sacrificing their children’s futures. If they do realize it, the language of dedication and service will help them to rationalize. The gods of success, power, and prestige, however make false and deceptive promises. In their language sacrifice is a good thing.

    The story of Abraham still horrifies us after three millennia. As a reward for his faith Abraham was able to keep Isaac and received this blessing.

I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." (Gen 22:17-18)

The gods of this world offer much, but their promises are deceptive and in the end, they can't deliver.

Martha vs. Mary

Spero News has published my review of Cynthia Bourgeault’s Centering Prayer and Inner Healing. (For reasons beyond my understanding of computers, Spero's link to Amazon doesn't work. If you want to support this site by buying the book through Amazon, you can do it here.)

The review reflects a conversation I had with my wife after she returned from her Teresa of Avila study group. The group had struggled a bit with the challenge of adapting Teresa to their working and family lives. Teresa, after all was writing for cloistered nuns. Our conversation reinforced my opinion that the institutional church is missing the boat on the topics of lay spirituality and workplace spirituality.

As I see it, there are two  problems. First, the church tends to interpret the Martha and Mary story as an indication that the contemplative life is a "better part" than the active life of service. Second, those who can see that a life of service is a valid path, assume that service can only be done when working for the church - or maybe a non profit. One of the reasons I keep linking to Gregory Pierce's book is that he sees business as a service and creative. We need a spirituality that helps us to find God where we spend most of our lives.

One of the nice things about having a blog is that I get to put forth my own opinions at a low cost. If you agree with my opinions about the way to connect the active and contemplative life,please support this blog by buying Bourgeault, Pierce or one of the other books linked on the right.

A Major Barrier to School Reform

We have been following Patrick Welsh’s columns on education ever since he began writing for the Washington Post. His columns helped us as our four children went through high school and college. His experience rings true to this father and husband of a teacher.

Now he is writing for USA today. Here is his latest on school reform For Once, Blame the Student:

    Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.
    Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries - such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana - often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C's and D's.
    As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.
    What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.
    Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.

Please read the entire column and mail it to your school boards. For my previous links to Welsh’s columns, plus some comments on workplace spirituality as it applies to schools, go here and here.

Balancing Work and Life: New and Old Answers

Tuesday I ran across The Inside Out Solution in the Washington Post. I'm glad I restrained my usual snarky comments about psychologists rediscovering old spiritual truths and re-read Douglas LaBier's article.
    He attributes work-family related stress to a lack of balance between inner and outer lives.
    His approach has similarities to the spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and to Bill Wilson’s famous 12 steps. The deep need for this approach can be seen in the film, Alfie, and in the gospel reading for Sunday.
    LaBier writes about the challenges his clients encounter on the job and at home:

Politicization of Intelligence III: Of Swords, Kool Aid and Corporate Culture

    See Patrick Lang for a comment on politicization. Follow this link for a description of how the corporate culture in the intelligence community changed. There have been times when intelligence officers were willing to "fall on their swords", i.e. sacrifice their careers rather than change their conclusions to please decision-makers. As Col. Lang describe it, in the recent past top level officers have "drunk kool aid". The reference is to Jonestown, where an entire community drank poison at the instigation of Rev. Jim Jones. In this case, a small group of top level political appointees changed the corporate culture so that intelligence officers "drank kool aid", i.e. lost their ability to tell the truth to decision makers. The corporate culture made truth telling impossible.
    How dangerous is this? Look here  for a posting on how a dysfunctional corporate culture contributed to the Columbia Shuttle disaster.

NOTE: Linked with Beltway Traffic Jam for 02/15/06