Over a plate of pierogies at a perfectly-preserved "old boys" sort of D.C. bar last week, a friend mused on "how strange it is to be in the world after a year at seminary." Indeed, everything feels topsy-turvy while at the same time topsy-turvy seems the right and proper order of things.
I, along with a couple of our colleagues, was in D.C. rather than Chicago because we've fallen backward into an AFL-CIO summer internship program that has us working with a handful of other students (largely undergraduates) in cities across the country. Last week, instead of building my pastoral voice, learning about interfaith work, and meeting you fabulous people, I learned labor's official position on the future of the movement. There was talk of "winning" the "fight," but little sense of common cause with the poor, the undocumented, our local farmers.
Suddenly I feel a sense of loss when one justice cause uprooted from the broader ethic that feeds it, suddenly I find myself offering the theological perspective to a group. For me, the world has been turned upside down a bit, and I sense how different this assignment is from what most of you will be doing. But there's an opportunity here to play chaplain to a community that might not know they need one, and to learn from a different way of going about justice work. Maybe, like Paul's people, I ought to keep turning things over – off we go.
paz,
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment