I wondered if I would pass the test:
Johnson, Sandra H
I WONDERED IF I WOULD PASS THE TEST SANDRA H. JOHNSON THE RAGING WATERS WITHIN THE LAITY & THE LIFE OF FAITH I am sitting in a I chapel in the airport in Cleveland as I write this. I can still...
...Although it is often more complex to involve the children, I like having them with me...
...The longing to get home is as intense as the excitement of leaving to do "great and important" work...
...I allow only so much time to do something- then it can't take more...
...My husband and I belong to a prayer group with four other couples...
...I must rely on what I have found to be true: that if I put myself in the presence of a faithful community, God will be there.ithful community, God will be there...
...they love that job...
...We meet monthly and have for the past six years or so...
...This hurts them...
...Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion...
...I'm always speeding along or lazing...
...I believe that the church can change...
...This time I delivered a conference paper on the legalities of high-technology home-health care, which is growing so rapidly and has significant impact on the well-being of both the person cared for and the caregiver...
...This may sound like a pretty lively prayer life-and sometimes it is...
...Yet there are months when I don't pray...
...These things do change my life in important ways...
...I have to drag myself to Sunday Mass and listen to the readings even when they seem meaningless...
...I have had the feeling that the difficult part was yet to come, much as I have often felt that the test of faith spoken of in Scripture would happen for me sometime in the future...
...I feel better about myself and my colleagues when I've been able to behave in a manner consistent with my values...
...I'm not sure that she believed me...
...it is so easy to gossip and to use whispered conspiracies as a method of succeeding in a dispute...
...I know from experience that I will at some point hear a word, phrase, or story that touches me and allows me to let go of my agitation and fears and trust in God's faithfulness...
...I read that Red Smith was asked how long it took him to write an article and he said, "As long as I've got...
...I try not to live in two worlds: a world of work and a world of home...
...They didn't like it when I served on the parish council, for example, but they seem to like helping to deliver Christmas baskets and serving at parish events...
...That reading and the opportunity to reflect on it in our prayer group released in me the grief I felt for the loss that I-not Bob and not my children-had already experienced because of his diagnosis...
...I remember, for example, when I had closed myself up in order to avoid confronting some painful memories, the Mass at which I heard, as if for the first time, the song by the St...
...But you can't do that with prayer that reaches a deeper level...
...I always run hot or cold...
...They also like to plan a decoration for the table or prepare a snack for our guests...
...Somehow I had expected to be the one who would need to be cared for, as sexist and unrealistic as that sounds...
...For example, I am a lector at our parish, and each time before I read I pray to the Holy Spirit that God will speak using my voice and that the congregation will hear the Word...
...I have seen God because a parish council president decided that the council was to become a faith community and center on prayer as well as agenda...
...a world of prayer and faith and a "real" or "modern" world...
...By the time I finish my work, whether in the law school at St...
...And if we are asked to host a visiting family, Emily and Katie make the decision because it is their bedrooms that will be used...
...We've known for over five years, yet only recently have I been willing to listen to what that means in relation to God's plan for me, as well as for him and for our family as a whole...
...That is part of the man I married...
...I 'm not sure that the students notice the difference, though I believe that they probably do...
...Is my position so financially and intellectually rewarding that I simply fear any fundamental change...
...I know it is much better to have a regular prayer time and a special prayer place, but that's not the way I am, at least not now...
...Give me a sharp sense of understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally...
...Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations, and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm...
...Dolores Curran recently wrote an article in which she commented on "church orphans," those children whose parents are active volunteers in their parish...
...help the kids with homework and cook dinner...
...It is easier for me to treat the one hundred students in my class as individual and precious human beings, who are confronting moral challenges as individuals and professionals as well as trying to master a particular technical subject matter...
...We merely gathered to nod our heads at appropriate times...
...Of course, it's not the wind...
...I often guide my actions with a prayer...
...We even have money deducted from his paycheck and automatically deposited in a travel account...
...I wondered-sometimes anxiously-if I would pass the test, whether the test were Bob's incapacitation or some test of faith...
...What caused me to come to value the "human" side as much as the "task" side of meetings is the transformation of our own parish council...
...I try, on an individual basis, to listen, to discern solutions, and to keep a sense of community, with all that implies for respecting each person and taking time to work out acceptable resolutions...
...I have to be where people are singing of faith...
...What different perspectives and experiences these people could bring to the interpretation and reflection on Scripture...
...When I am on opposite sides from someone, I generally try to talk to that person directly as soon as possible...
...Prayer is not like writing an article, teaching a class, cooking dinner, or playing with the kids...
...Children are much more capable than we give them credit for, and their participation is very meaningful to them...
...Family vacations immediately became a very high priority with us...
...I had been waiting for the "other shoe to drop" in relation to Bob's condition...
...My older daughter told me at age eleven that if women couldn't be altar servers or priests, men ought not be allowed to be lectors then...
...Sometimes the long silences happen because I lose a sense of myself and feel too agitated for the intimacy that is prayer...
...I can still hear the incessant pages over the loudspeaker and the travelers' conversations as they pass the door of the chapel...
...The way I have resolved the constant, and important, requests for help is to select those in which my daughters can participate...
...They make phone calls to let the families on my assigned phone tree know when school is canceled due to snow...
...I've never been in an airport chapel before, but I thought it might be a more appropriate place for inspiration than the cafeteria across the way...
...It doesn't seem to have a deadline...
...They have even been lectors with us at special Masses...
...My own questions have changed, though some recur over time: Am I, with legal education as my full-time job in a Catholic university, doing as God would want me to do...
...Our daughters, Emily, thirteen, and Katie, ten, are experts in "stuffing envelopes and sticking labels for peace and justice...
...It is the same church in which my daughters have to experience the humiliation of being told that simply because they are female they are prohibited from serving at the altar...
...So I find myself trusting in the church-the same church that so often causes me frustration and anger...
...This invigorated the council and contributed to our development as individuals...
...It's the same with my prayer...
...Do I have a different calling or is this the one...
...As much as possible, for example, I try to involve our children in my volunteer work, something we learned from Parenting for Peace and Justice, by Jim and Kathy McGinnis...
...I didn't even know the names of the other members...
...Other times, though, I find myself just going through the motions...
...It's so easy to say, "I will, but later...
...It's often so much hurry up and wait...
...Curran's point is a good one: parish organizations should be sensitive about asking parents of young children to volunteer...
...Such callings have happened so frequently that it puts me in wonder of the faithfulness of God...
...In my experience, however, parishes or peace groups or others who should know better often neglect or abuse the individuals working in their organizations...
...These times occur when I get very wrapped up in some writing project or program or have to meet a deadline on a substantial task...
...I have found that I must put my self in the presence of God or my faith community no matter what, no matter how stressed I am or how tired or how rebellious...
...When I place my teaching in a prayerful context, for example, it is fundamentally changed...
...As a law professor with a special interest in modern health care, I travel a lot...
...In those times, I will pray only at Sunday Mass, if then, or make a quick Sign of the Cross, more out of superstition than prayer...
...But, despite all this, I find myself returning over and over to the Mass, because to me the Eucharist remains uncompromised by the weaknesses of the organizational church...
...I never really answer because part of the answer is that I do it by driving myself crazy...
...For each meeting, a member prepared a prayer or reading, and there was time at the beginning for sharing...
...The following week one of the men in our prayer group commented on how meaningful that had been for him, as it was for me as well...
...It is easy for me to watch television and read at the same time...
...I told her that injustice is not cured by creating a new injustice...
...It is not the model most often adopted by university faculties, especially law faculties in which each person is skilled in advocacy and negotiation and enjoys the process...
...I'm not very good at slow and steady...
...Gently, quietly, slowly, I hear the voice of God as if in the wind...
...It helps the cause and they are getting a sense of the value of doing what they can do...
...because my children ask me "why" a lot...
...He was, and still is, dependable and reliable and strong, though maybe a little less so now than before...
...Louis - Jesuits, "Be Not Afraid...
...I believe that our institutional church maintains a vision of respect for human dignity in protest against modern culture, a vision that I embrace...
...Mass attendance, prayer group, and retreats are partly my habit, but they are also a choice...
...Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention the locale, but it does capture a good portion of my life...
...I am angry when I have to listen to priests who abuse the pulpit by standing there with only a vague idea of what they want to say and meandering through the mandatory twenty minutes...
...One clear benefit of his being diagnosed is that we do not put off until tomorrow things that we want to do...
...My husband Bob has multiple sclerosis (MS...
...Because I know from experience the critical role that particular individuals have played in my own faith journey, I know that I have a role to play in contributing to the development of the people of God...
...This loss of a sense of security and change in expectations is something I feel real grief over, just as Bob's self-image has changed by virtue of his having MS, even if the physical limitations have been minimal...
...It was only in prayer that I was able to understand this...
...But I notice the difference...
...When I first joined it, the meetings were cold and boring...
...Often before I begin to teach I pray a prayer for teachers by Thomas Aquinas: Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, lofty origin of all being...
...Louis University or at a conference in some distant city, I want to be home immediately-if not an hour ago...
...One Sunday one of the readings exhorted Christians not to live in ignorance but to discern in wisdom God's plan present in our lives...
...I had lost a sense of security that I had had in our first ten years of marriage...
...I also have been taking a three-day Passion Week retreat for each of the past five years and a shorter retreat in Advent...
...And sometimes I know that I simply refuse, although I would like to deny that...
...People ask me how I can do so much teaching and writing and speaking and homemaking...
...If the meeting doesn't continue too long, they even tolerate the imposition...
...and because the men and women in my prayer group reveal their own personal struggles and rewards...
...I push deadlines...
...My experiences give me the discipline to put myself in the presence of prayer-whether at Mass, in my prayer group, or on retreat...
...because my husband's faithfulness and steadfastness reflect that of Christ...
...I don't expect perfection in either my writing or my housecleaning...
...So far, Bob has suffered very little physical incapacity due to the MS...
...It's usually in the voices of other people who relate their own experience, or question, or offer an opportunity...
...Eventually, though, I can no longer avoid recognizing the emptiness within...
...I regret that the church does not encourage diversity in preaching, including women preachers and lay preachers of different races...
...Bob had been, and in fact still is, sort of a jock...
...I always had believed that the raging waters and fires of hell and power of death mentioned in the song were things that only martyrs and saints had to deal with...
...The Gospels and Epistles give us a model for how human communities should come together and treat each other...
...Then the new chairperson of the council decided that we could be a "faith community" and began in simple ways to make it so...
...But that day at Mass, the hymn revealed to me that the raging waters and fires of hell were in my own heart, in the painful memories and hurts that I would have to admit and then forgive...
...I try to have meetings in my home so the children can meet the people with whom I work...
...I try, not often successfully, to challenge destructive politics...
...The problem is that you may succeed by harming another's reputation or credibility, and that tends to injure the whole group over the long term...
...My experience is that prayer makes a real difference in my "one world" campaign...
...my work is more meaningful...
...I try to make one world...
...my prayer life is dry and my relationship with God is distant...
Vol. 116 • April 1989 • No. 7
