So I got this award last night from Providence House (see link at right), and after my friend Dorothy Thomas introduced me and handed me a lovely piece of engraved lucite, this is what I had to say:
Thank you Dorothy. It means a lot to me to be given this tribute from a person whose moral clarity is an inspiration to me, and who also, as it happens, is a fellow Entertainment Weekly subscriber who shares my enthusiasm for trashy television and movies. And it is humbling to be recognized by Providence House, which truly does the Lord’s work in helping women who emerge from the mistakes of their lives and the failings of our society to try to put their world back together after spending time away from us in prison.
“The Lord’s work” is not a phrase I use very often. Partly because it is a kind of stock phrase that has been sapped of its original power and meaning, and partly because I must admit I have always been uncomfortable using the language of faith. I was baptized a Roman Catholic, never missed Sunday mass, denied myself childish pleasures for the many weeks of Lent, confessed my measly sins each Saturday afternoon and rattled my penance of Hail Marys and Our Fathers at the altar rail with the lightning speed of an auctioneer, until, after twelve years of parochial school, I got away from the Church as fast as I could.
I didn’t care for the cruelty administered by so many of the Sisters and Brothers who taught me, and I could not abide the Penal Code Catholicism in which I was raised. I didn’t want to be a captive audience at Mass for a pastor who exhorted us to support the Vietnam War against the godless Communists. Much of what I heard from the representatives of my faith as a child portrayed a God of anger and pettiness, one so sensitive to his prerogatives he would have you burn for eternity for missing Mass –- same punishment as Hitler. It made no sense to me. So I fell away.
But the question of faith, and, most particularly, the path of Jesus, has been much on my mind lately. The New York Times had an article last week on why so many soldiers who knew about the horrific abuses carried out by agents of our government against those helpless in their custody at the Abu Ghraib prison kept silent, a question that should haunt us all. When Specialist Joseph Darby arrived there in October, the Times reports, one of his fellow soldiers showed him a picture on his digital camera of a naked prisoner chained to his cell with his arms hung above him –- an image, I must point out, which cannot help but bring to mind the agonies of Jesus on the cross. “The Christian in me says it’s wrong,” Specialist Darby said when he came forward later. “I knew I had to do something.”
Specialist Darby, wherever he is, and far, far more than those who sent him to war in the name of God, seems to me to get the essence of the Jesus who was buried under the layers of rules in my Baltimore Catechism. And so, too, do the amazing women of Providence House.
Theirs is the Jesus who tells Peter he must forgive the brother who sins against him not seven, but seventy-seven times.
Theirs is the Jesus who exalts those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who show mercy, those who make peace.
Theirs is the Jesus who asks us to take the splinter out of our own eye before we criticize the failings of others, to hold back the stone unless we ourselves are guiltless, to live by the simple but transcendent rule that we treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.
Theirs is the Jesus who washed the feet of prostitutes and drew his last breaths on a hill between two thieves.
Theirs is the Jesus who wants us to sell our possessions and give the money to the poor.
Theirs is the Jesus who tells us to visit the sick and those in prison and wants us to know that whatever we do for the least of our brethren, we do to him.
Forget Mel Gibson and Opus Dei and some bishops more concerned about the financial or political bottom line than the moral and spiritual one. All around us are women and men whose work and lives exemplify the Gospel. Some do it by enduring poverty and racism and sexism and violence to take their rightful place in the human family, and they pass through the doors of Providence House on this hard path. Some, like Sister Janet and her staff, open those doors and walk alongside them on this path. In the work I am privileged to do at the Open Society Institute, I have the blessing of knowing people like this, learning from them, and providing whatever support we can.
To paraphrase slightly what Jack Nicholson said to Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets –- you see how the Entertainment Weekly subscription comes in handy -– they make me want to be a better man. They help me see what it means to be Christian. They wash away the sins of the Penal Code Catholicism of my youth and plant in my heart the notion that maybe, just maybe, I am not so fallen away as I thought.
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