God is my client:

...Like Kate and me, God is open, vulnerable, and at risk for all the communication, joys, and pains that a fleshy, in-depth relationship with a human being entails...

...I can be God's agent in all the situations that arise in my life-professional and otherwise...

...These experiences have appreciably softened my view of the Lord...

...The sense that God's relationship to me has a component of In 1987, Commonweal published a series of articles by lay people who described their personal experience of faith in the work place...

...She is the same for me...

...Illinois's public policy, as expressed in its workers' compensation laws, seems to encourage this depersonalization...

...Like my clients, God wants me to stand for and advance his interests and purposes...

...When I do tort work, I try to understand the full impact of the client's pain, suffering, and individual losses...

...I relish this work because of the opportunity it gives me to affect the lives of individual persons...

...If "God is love" to us, I imagine that he has some of my same experiences...

...agent in the lives of others, I know others can be and are in mine...

...I hope and trust that the Lord will deal with me in the same way, and I try to adopt his approach with the clients I serve...

...I have come to understand more fully the openness that lovers must have to one another, and the vulnerability and being-at-risk that such openness sometimes entails...

...Our fourth contributor to this series is Timothy J. Reuland, an attorney who lives in Aurora, Illinois...

...God's hands, heart, and mind can be anywhere.eart, and mind can be anywhere...

...Certainly God trusts us...

...This takes time and patience...

...My faith helps me to push back against such pressures...

...Often a client cannot ably articulate the life changes an injury has wrought, so that I must talk to his or her friends, family members, or co-workers to understand the full meaning of the case...

...I try to grasp the nuances...

...I see how he stands with them when they are about to be stoned, and ultimately sends them away affirmed...

...As when I know a client is counting on me, I try to give God my best attention-through prayer, through reading the Scriptures, through listening to him in others...

...Our faith counsels us that we are, in each other's lives, avenues of God's grace and goodness...

...Where do you find spiritual strength and guidance...

...Nonetheless, God continues to engage me and to count on me...

...or else they stand charged with having done wrong to others...

...This sense of being God's agent has informed my understanding of being a husband...

...As a lawyer, I work on civil trials, spending my days within the adversarial system of settling controversies between persons and businesses...

...These are the major roles through which I have tried to live and to understand my faith in God...

...A large part of my practice consists of representing persons injured by torts-the negligence of others while driving, making a product, or rendering professional services...

...We asked each individual: How is your Catholic faith manifest in your daily life and work...

...Because of our individual histories and personalities, and our shared experiences and intimacy, Kate and I ought to be the best bets for bringing about in each other's lives all the goodness God wants to show us...

...God initiates some things, accepts others...

...a person whose life has been diminished by a disabling hand injury, for example, is "50 percent of a hand...

...In my marriage to my wife Kate I am one of God's means to continue to create her, to make love incarnate in her life, and to redeem any aspect of her life that may need it...

...I have asked myself what is this God like, who chooses, or, perhaps needs, to work through agents...

...If we cannot find common ground through negotiations, then we must hammer out justice before a judge or a jury...

...I am who I am, with my own identity and limitations, but I can be an agent- a trustee, a spokesman-for a principal, be he or she an injured client or the Lord...

...Friends who are physicians tell me their experiences are similar...

...The client deserves my full attention, and I try to deliver it...

...I become their means of expression or presence in a situation...

...Insurers, dealing with huge numbers of claimants, often resort to categorizing them...

...When I read the Gospel accounts of Christ's encounters with individuals-the tax collectors, the adulteresses, those struggling with whether tobelieve-I am struck repeatedly by his clear perception of them as individuals, his concern for them as individuals, his affirmation of them as individuals...

...When I sit across the desk from an individual, I determine to do whatever is necessary to develop clearly and fully the impact of an injury or a contract dispute upon that individual...

...The people I represent believe they have been economically or physically wronged and want redress...

...This is not to say that I view myself as "another Christ," as my early religious education counseled...

...However, the pressures are immense to ignore individuals and the nuances of their particular controversies...

...Particularly when my work gets painstaking and grueling, when listening becomes hard, I reflect that God loves my individual client as much as he loves me and everyone else...

...On some days, the total impact of all these forces seems to counsel: Move the cases, skip the nuances...

...We lawyers are pushed not to stand for the individual with all the rough edges, quirks, or unique aspects his or her case presents...

...When I do so, I find that not only my wife and children, but also my clients and others, are to me exactly what I hope to be to them: agents of love and goodness in my life...

...As I have learned more over the years about loving and being loved, I have seen the counterpoints of initiation and acceptance that loving involves...

...I feel I am no more Christ than I am the aggrieved client when I go to court...

...No, I try to see them in them, and to enjoy what is unique about them...

...As one of the principals of an eleven-lawyer firm, I live with the businessper-son's daily concerns: with personnel issues and the need to generate dollars for salaries, overhead, and plain, sweet profit...

...As an agent, I try to understand my principal's interests and goals and I try to bring about the results that principal wants or needs...

...Of course lawyers are not alone in feeling such pressures...

...and vice versa...

...I view my role as a Christian in much the same way...

...How has faith shaped your choices: vocational, financial, ethical...

...Their judgments about an individual patient are questioned, and sometimes constrained, by the policies of HMOs or insurers on what is "usual, customary, or proper" medical care...

...Also like my clients, his interests may be hurt by my neglect, inattention, lack of preparation, or inabilities...

...We received such positive response to the series that we have decided to continue it...

...My temptation is to view the victim simply as a member of some category-say, as just one more whiplash case...

...There are pressures closer to home, too...

...Just as I must make a client's viewpoint and interests felt, so too I must make the Lord's interests present in my life situations: as a lawyer, yes, but also as husband, father, citizen, friend, businessperson...

...In professional situations I act for others...

...Just as my faith and reading of the Gospels influences how I try to practice law and treat my clients, I know my practice of law has affected my faith and the way I see my relationship to God...

...I try to be open to direction, grace, joy, inspiration, and pleasure, which God might be trying to give me through others...

...This doesn't mean that I try "to see God" in others, as if some common denominator, with which I would be comfortable, could be found in each of them...

...Practitioners regularly refer to cases in the most impersonal terms...

...Even lawyers, their clients' advocates, must translate controversies into the appropriate legal framework and risk losing, in the translation, the extent of the human suffering at issue...

...Just as faith in God has helped me understand my role in marriage, my marriage has affected my understanding of God...

...Courts and administrative agencies, even when ably run, are often jammed...