Coming Clean

… because that always solves my problems … especially those I’m having to deal with right now.

In other news, someone needs to wipe up all the sarcasm and bitterness oozing from me.

I feel kind of helpless watching all those folks suffering. I haven’t given any money yet because the money I do have to give, I want to make sure I know where it goes. Perhaps I’m guilty of suspecting misuse by the red cross. I dunno. There’s something of a Catholic Charity collection this Sunday. We intend to give to that. I’m also thinking of looking up a few convents and monasteries and Catholic hospitals I know in the area and donate to them as well.

And what bothers me about all that is whether or not I’m being wrongfully exclusive. Should I care how it is my money gets put to use so long as it is getting to someone to use it? There’s certainly a duty of good stewardship in this, but how far does it go? What else should I do?

Your parents always tell you that you can’t save the world. I don’t intend to do it myself. But in Christ what’s to say I can’t play my part? And how am I to find my part that Christ intends and wishes for me to play - that part He’d play for me if He were me?

When you watch suffering, what else can you do but participate from a distance in order to keep your own safe? … except perhaps doing the radical thing and walking wilfully into the fray, all in love? I find it increasingly easy to stay out of the fray, and I find that very uncomfortable and unsettling and part of me wishes I was not so.

…has been long…

Without going into a whole lot of details about ALL that has happened, I’ll hit my highlights.

I traveled to Fort Worth on Wednesday and returned Friday night.

While there, I watched a HBO (or some such cable channel) documentary on the Beslan school hostage situation in Russia. The only people that talk are the children that survived. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’ll mess you up. As I watched it, there was a rage inside me against those who would cause such things as well as a desperate desire to reach through and wipe away those children’s tears, those awful memories and give them comfort, if I could.

I also had the opportunity to share my Catholic faith twice. It was interesting on both counts because I really wasn’t looking to do so … yet an opportunity was given in each to see how open I was willing to be about who I am, what I believe. In other words, I really didn’t instigate these conversations, they just happened. I don’t know if (and actually probably doubt that) what I said made much of a difference.

The first time was funny though because I was just wanting to talk with this guy to pass the time as it was only the two of us waiting to get where we were going on a bus. He turned it to religion. He turned it to my faith. He asked me how I reconciled with the Catholic Church’s works based salvation. Each time, I did try to trump him slightly from going where I figured he didn’t want to go (usually by using big words (Arminian/Reformed) and evoking the Patristics and councils (teachings concerning Eucharist, Hippo, Trent, and Vatican 2 (though that one not by name))), but he pushed back each time. I spent most of the time talking about my faith; he just asked questions.

When he left, he says, “Here’s my card for work and my church. I’m a pastor at a Reformed Baptist church.”

Figures. Here I just spent the last 10 minutes talking about Reformed theology vs Catholic theology as I see it and a lack of consistency on the part of the Reformed and the integrity, even in admitting and owning mistakes, by the Catholic Church (remember, the conversation - as he steered it - was about why I chose Catholicism … and in light of the “problems” that he perceived). If I had to guess, I would guess that whole experience did not go anywhere close to how he planned. Hopefully he learned something. Hopefully I did right. Otherwise, I don’t know what to take away from that experience.

On the way home, a bunch a fire fighters destined for Louisiana and Mississippi sat behind me. God bless them, keep them safe, grant them strength, and bring them home.