I too share your sense of bearing weight in your arms. In my life and ministry, I was touched by my time in Japan, visiting the Philippines to see where my father had grown up in the streets of Tondo near another trash heap.
In my ministry life, I have held the weight of my own daughter (who often can't sit and stand through an entire mass); the weight of her brother, who we buried a year or so before she was born; the weight of my first RCIA inquirer, who died of cancer just before Easter and whose urn I accepted upon delivery to the church.
It does me good to hear you speak about the big picture of the world that you embrace with compassion and justice. I remember the haze of my own graduations and the repeated mantra of telling people what I majored in and what I was going to do with "my summer" or "my life."
I must admit, at the time, I did not think about it in quite the thoughtful depth you do. It took me years of travel and the moral uprightness of a Jewish wife to get this Catholic boy interested in engaged Buddhism to discover Catholic Social Teaching, political activism, and responsible living.
Good luck to you. You inspire those older than you. And that lifts a burden I often carry, which is one in which I sometimes doubt whether others--the future of the church--will join in too.
I too share your sense of bearing weight in your arms. In my life and ministry, I was touched by my time in Japan, visiting the Philippines to see where my father had grown up in the streets of Tondo near another trash heap.
In my ministry life, I have held the weight of my own daughter (who often can't sit and stand through an entire mass); the weight of her brother, who we buried a year or so before she was born; the weight of my first RCIA inquirer, who died of cancer just before Easter and whose urn I accepted upon delivery to the church.
It does me good to hear you speak about the big picture of the world that you embrace with compassion and justice. I remember the haze of my own graduations and the repeated mantra of telling people what I majored in and what I was going to do with "my summer" or "my life."
I must admit, at the time, I did not think about it in quite the thoughtful depth you do. It took me years of travel and the moral uprightness of a Jewish wife to get this Catholic boy interested in engaged Buddhism to discover Catholic Social Teaching, political activism, and responsible living.
Good luck to you. You inspire those older than you. And that lifts a burden I often carry, which is one in which I sometimes doubt whether others--the future of the church--will join in too.