God isn't finished with me yet
Brickley, Rosemarie
GUD ISN'T FINISHED rosemarie brickley WITH ME YET LIVING IN THE WORLD OF WHAT IS Friends worry THE LAITY about my ap&THE...
...I started reading anything which promised to explain this new vision of "church" and found myself in a world which was bursting with new ideas...
...Our parish provides a'' Quiet Mass,'' which was initially set up as a liturgy for those who "experienced difficulty'' with the then-new way of doing things...
...God and I have a great personal relationship: God is God, I am I, and so long as I remember who is which, we get along just fine...
...At most parishes I visited, people welcomed me, patted me on the arm, asked my name, told me all about their communities...
...After reading the draft of the policy, I understood that the memo would also serve as a coat of whitewash to obscure the adverse impact of the policy on a certain class of employees...
...In response to my questions, God provided me with the opportunity to give witness, and then went off to watch over a molting sparrow...
...Disgust with people who blindly accept superficial quasi-theology drives me to search for the deeper meanings of every mystery...
...I didn't even have a job and they wanted me to have a "ministry...
...Instructions, even advice, issued from within such a framework cannot help but reflect the self-confidence engendered by the safety of the lifestyle...
...I feel ripped off when I give a dollar to a chubby-cheeked young man holding up a "Homeless and Hungry" sign...
...Hey, God...
...Out of work for over a year, I had wandered for months from parish to parish trying to find a place to hide from my personal failure...
...They seemed puzzled by my concern over the morality of the policy...
...With Vatican II, I realized that my membership in the Catholic church could no longer be a sort of spiritual IRA security plan...
...At the Quiet Mass, I was delighted to find that nobody even looked at me...
...For which I give thanks...
...GUD ISN'T FINISHED rosemarie brickley WITH ME YET LIVING IN THE WORLD OF WHAT IS Friends worry THE LAITY about my ap&THE LIFE parent lack of progress in OF FAITH what they insist on calling my "personal relationship with God...
...Are we supposed to stand on the street corner and yell a lot...
...Since anger is something I "do" well, anger is the tool God uses to get my attention...
...Five strangers reached out and touched me and, all unknowing, they broke through the wall of my lonely fury...
...One Sunday, after losing out at five job interviews the previous week, I blew up and committed the previously unthinkable: I deliberately missed Mass...
...Today, God put into my path an old bag lady pulling her world behind her in a rusty shopping cart...
...It was legal, and it made me squirm...
...For some, that may not sound like much of a rebellion...
...The movers and shakers get right out there in the family van, transporting the homeless off the streets and into shelters...
...Start office meetings with a prayer...
...the rite is modern but the people who attend it are not...
...The company, however, was in severe financial difficulties and needed the escrowed bonus money in order to survive...
...Those esteemed gentlemen are blessed with adequate housing, food, medical care, and honorable retirement...
...411...
...Sometimes I feel that life certainly would be a lot simpler if I could throw my cards in the air and just live with whatever comes down face-up...
...God through Jesus Christ breathed the Holy Spirit into the world and into me...
...Were you sick...
...Those men seem unaware that I don't live there, in the world of '' what should be...
...Each person whispered the same thing: "We missed you last week...
...and progress in the journey to salvation was a matter of penitent weekly reports to a confessor, while safely hidden behind a mesh grill...
...God is neither my daddy nor my good buddy nor my significant other...
...God is the center of my life...
...The next Sunday morning I admitted that I just might have missed God's point somewhere, and returned to "my"'place at the Quiet Mass...
...My childhood image of the Redeemer was of a blue-eyed, brown-haired Jesus Christ floating far above me, his head outlined with shiny stuff...
...Once the policy was in place, one small group of already well-paid technicians would lose earned bonuses...
...As I sat there scowling, five people came to me during the minutes before Mass began...
...Life certainly was a lot simpler when all I had to do was whatever I was told to do by the many and uncompromising dicta issued by the church of my childhood...
...Usually, the questions were based around the Catholic laity's favorite 410 icebreaker, "What's your ministry...
...Adult rejection of this unearthly and irrelevant being carried me all the way to Buddhism before my somehow inevitable metanoia...
...March and carry signs protesting any of the multitude of injustices we see...
...In judging business policies as well as every other moral decision, all I can do is bow respectfully in the direction of the magisterium and then take my best shot at a correct choice...
...for me, the day was filled with apparitions in which my second-grade catechism teacher glared at me from every corner of my apartment...
...I live here, in this world of " what it is...
...There are those laity who successfully give faith witness in and to the world...
...On one balance plate of the scale stood moral teachings about right, wrong, and justice...
...This is business, not sex...
...In me, freedom is at war with nostalgia...
...The unique self-communication of God in Jesus Christ seems to me to deserve a bit more respect than is implied by the theology of a with-it Christianity...
...The magisterium has little to say to me on the subject of moral business decisions...
...I am able to orate for hours on the subject of Jesus' growing consciousness of his divinity, but I eat fish every Friday...
...I was then, and still am, humbled by the ways in which God chooses to act in and through the human...
...Are you feeling all right now...
...During the following week I failed at three more interviews...
...After weighing the facts, shifting back and forth among the political mandates, the legal probabilities, and the moral certainties, I realized what I had to do...
...Organize a group...
...Obviously, God isn't finished with me yet...
...What does that have to do with it...
...They shouldn't worry...
...The boss at my new job directed me to write a memo of justification, for the record, of a company policy which skated close to the edge of the law...
...I stood on the other plate, mixing whitewash...
...Images of "Abba," "Anthropological Christology" and "Charismatic Movement" exploded in my mind, accustomed to orderly, comfortable visions of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost...
...Meeting God every day is exhausting, however, especially for one whose Catholicism was formed in the decades just prior to Vatican II...
...Each one tiptoed away without waiting for a reply...
...Outrage over the status assigned to women in the world and in the church brought me, finally, to recognition of the linguistic limitations inherent in the sacred descriptive, "Son of God...
...one-on-one familiarity with the Almighty was not encouraged...
...Most of us, especially we of the Quiet Mass, have not the foggiest idea how to go about that...
...The difficulties are not only in the implications, but also in the implementation of the directive: Christians are to give witness to the presence of God in the world...
...God continues to reshape me through the means I provide...
...I began regular attendance, glowering at the world from "my" side-aisle seat...
...My life was in turmoil when I first discovered the Quiet Mass...
...I bluster that prayer is efficacious only for personal head-clearing, but I sit and stare numbly at the crucifix on my living room wall...
...I suspect that, if a poll were taken of national spiritual closets, I would be marked as the stereotypical American Catholic...
...The work of moving Gospel values into the world is going to take some time, I think...
...A constant thread runs through every homily, however, teaching and explaining over and over Vatican II's vision of the wandering Pilgrim People of God...
...The Quiet Mass still provides a bit of breathing space for the unreconstructed...
...No special events, no baptisms, no installations in ministry, no Professions of Faith are ever scheduled for the Quiet Mass...
...The movers and shakers are spiritual miles ahead of me and I may never catch up...
...They asked terrifying questions, though...
...Five of the nine company directors were practicing Catholics...
...Filled with anger, all I wanted was a corner pew in which I could crouch and hate God, who was of course responsible for my situation...
...The regulars of the Quiet Mass are being conducted gently but inevitably into the church in the modern world, at a pace entirely their own...
...One area is really tough for me, though...
...In those earlier decades, a personal relationship with God was an intensely private matter...
...Said one, "Morality...
...Period...
...I sniff knowingly at those who carry home jars of holy water, but I patiently burn last year's blessed palm in a small dish, and work the ashes into the front lawn...
...Five people reached out to another person...
...Good...
...The policy was logical, reasonable, and representative of business decisions made every day...
...Those people are able to translate theological moral values into secular activism with amazing ease...
Vol. 114 • July 1987 • No. 13
