Perspectives

So a couple of months ago, a part time job at my church found me. Yes, you read that right. I was in the right place at the right time and knew the right people. It's a slightly new twist on the work I've done before in the church and a most welcome way to pass time while waiting for a permanent job. (side note--social studies teacher looking for a full time teaching position. MD certification grade 7-12, available to start work August 1.)

Anyway...what I've found in all my time working in parishes is that there is this dual experience of reality, or at least there is for me. There's the clinical "what's next, where are the people, is everything going the way it's supposed to go" detail-oriented mentality, and then there's the realization that real people are experiencing real things, like birth, marriage, and death.

And death is the real kicker. What I'd been told the last time I worked in the Roman Catholic church was that funerals sort of follow a feast-or-famine pattern. In the church where I grew up (which is a very large parish), you might go three weeks without having a funeral come in followed by weeks of 8 funerals. The same is true in the rural parish where I currently worship, although on a much smaller scale. And we're in a busy period now. There were two funerals at the end of last week, and another one came in yesterday (scheduled for next week).

Too often, we forget what really matters and instead get caught up in stupid stuff. Case in point: office drama broke out mid-morning last Monday. And it was DRAMA. There ultimately was a staff meeting to sort everything out. But that's another story that I won't tell here. But here's the back story. A person who is (and whose large family is) well-known and loved in our parish passed away on June 19 after being sick for some time. On June 18, our beloved Padre met with a different family about a memorial service for a different parishoner. The funeral was scheduled for Friday the 25th, the memorial service for Saturday the 26th. And 45 minutes before the widow is due in to the office to plan the Friday funeral, the drama breaks out. Padre's response was one of the greatest lines I've probably ever heard:

"I've got dead people. Which means I need to be doing priestly things. I don't have time for this [this being the drama]."

Padre calls them like he sees them. But there's a more profound truth behind this comment. At that moment, families were grieving as the rest of us were confronted with another reminder of our own mortality. Meanwhile, some individuals were more worried about who said what to whom.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. Another important thing I've learned about parish work is that some days are ordinary. Others, however, are not. And yesterday was one of the latter. Within 10 minutes of Padre and I sitting down at our respective desks, Padre in a slightly anxious tone asked me to get checks for him to sign. He was listening to his police scanner and heard a call that meant that he might have to run against the clock to the hospital. Sadly, though, this parishoner's funeral is Wednesday in our mission church in Rock Hall. I won't go into detail about this case, but it was surreal listening to it play out on the scanner and really contemplating this reality. I was reminded of something another boss of mine at a different job said when one of our coworkers there passed away very suddenly in February:

"Tomorrow isn't guaranteed for anyone, and no one gets out of this alive."

And that's the reality. In the Bible, the psalmist writes, "Seventy is the sum or our years, or eighty, if we are strong." That's basically the bottom line. We've got a short time here. Is it worth it worrying excessively about who said what to whom? The rest of that verse (Psalm 90:10) reads: "Most of them are sorrow and toil; they pass quickly, we are all but gone." Certainly not the most optimistic perspective, but just as certainly on the money on many levels. Yes, life is filled with struggles and trials, but how many of these trials are our own creation? And how much of this is due to our own (narrow) perspective? Do we really have time for them, or is Padre the only one who doesn't?

So it seems we have two choices. Get stuck in the mire of who said what to whom, or realize that some people's numbers are up, others have bigger fish to fry, and time flies whether you're having fun or not.

And maybe that's the difference between seventy and eighty.