“It feels good to laugh a little, but we really are facing a difficult task,” Carla said. “Actually, it really does fit together. What I want to accomplish is to make sure that the immigrants who are struggling for their lives are not invisible.”
“Maybe a way to do that,” said Al, “is to help us remember that we are called by God. What if we were all invited to revisit our call and who it was that called us?”
“Like we just did at the coffee house?”
“Yes, even as you talk about the immigration issue, we need to sense the God who called each of us being present as we respond.”
“You mean I can’t just guilt them into doing what I want? You’re going to take all the fun out of it. Now you want me to know their names, feel their pain, and treat them as human beings.” Carla shook her head in mock exasperation.
They entered the park and left the sounds of the urban street behind. It was spring. Daffodils, Narcissus, and Cherry trees in bloom sang of life. Carla stopped and gazed at the cornucopia of colors before her. “It makes me sad even as it fills me with delight,” Carla said. “This is God’s gift to humans. That mother whose death keeps haunting me was denied the freedom to taste creation’s wonder. That’s just not right.”
“Carla, back there in the coffee house, when I was relating to you the events that led to my awareness of God calling me, it was like the distance between me and God was closed and I was again experiencing God’s choice of me as a human being.”
“I know,” Carla said. “I hadn’t relived that experience in the chapel for years but just for a moment I remembered again that when all else fails, God has my back.”
“Many of us as clergy seem to lose that sense of God’s immediacy as we are overwhelmed by the demands of ministry. What a gift if we could share the wonder of God’s call among our clergy colleagues” Al said with growing excitement.
SMcCutchan