What I Struggle With

A few weeks ago, we held the final retreat for our Engaging Spirituality group. I haven't been able to attend the regular weekly sessions, because they were being held at the same time as our JustFaith meetings, but I've attended a few times, and have made it to three of the four retreats.

There is a regular exercise at each of the meetings and retreats that is called Bearings...where a letter is read from someone who has been active in Justice/Peace for a good part of his/her life. In these letters, there are three topics: My Struggle (what the person has struggled with over the years, and especially now), My Practice (what the person finds uplifting, grace-giving, sustaining), and My Challenge (what the person invites the hearers to take to heart, to live out). In addition to those guest writers, over the course of the weeks each member of the ES group is asked to write a personal Bearings letter, to share with the group.

I was asked to share my own Bearings letter as the final letter, at our closing retreat. The exercise of pondering, writing, & rewriting was cathartic; and when I read my Bearings letter to the group, I honestly found myself in tears when I read aloud the "struggles" part. Here are the last two paragraphs from that section of the letter.

"However, my biggest two struggles are getting more difficult as I get older. One is with my Church, which I do love. But perhaps because I love it, it is so hard not to be very disappointed with it, and sometimes very angry. I'm not even talking about priests who sexually abuse kids, but the tendencies still within our Church that kept it quiet. I'm talking about celibates who deny ministry and leadership roles to women and married people and cloak it in theology. I'm talking about authority figures who love the trappings of power, who are clubby with each other, or who cozy up to the powers of the world instead of challenging them. I have always struggled with this, but more so of late. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm afraid it's because I think it's getting worse. Fortunately, our best theology is stronger than these pretensions, and the gospel has its own truth which ultimately cannot be denied.

"My biggest struggle, however, may surprise you. It is the struggle with being an American in the 21st century. I am deeply ashamed of our country right now. I am ashamed of the national discourse in the halls of power. I am ashamed of our tax and economic systems that disproportionately and unjustly reward those who already have the most power and money, and of people that want to cut off benefits for the common good or for the poor. And I am ashamed when at the same time we live in a country that has greater war-making capabilities than any country in the history of the world, which spends almost as much on its military might as the rest of the world combined. I am ashamed that the good people of our country cannot see this, or feel so helpless and powerless that they merely complain, and don't try to do anything about it. For me, this struggle has gotten so bad that frankly, I cringe when I hear people say God Bless America, like our president and all politicians do regularly, or when I'm at the ballgame and people stand and sing that song, when I feel we should be saying God HELP America. I'm sorry to be so blunt and I'm sorry if I offend you, but I want to tell you what I struggle with. In fact, I've become convinced that the only way I can live with this any longer is by trying much harder to do something about it, and that's a direction I hear God calling me toward."

More about this at another time. On Monday, I leave for Africa, to visit our sister parish in Namitembo, Malawi. Accompanying me will be 7 high school students from our parish, along with 4 other adults. I may create a post or two while there, if I can figure out how to do it.