Archive of Letters to My Friends: Why I keep on and do not give up

  

Why I keep on and do not give up

November 2004

By the Rev. Jon Rieley-Goddard

Dear friends,

    Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

    I mean, it’s OK to do things for the right reasons, and to work for the coming of the Kingdom, which I am quite certain will never happen in the way that those who use that phrase hope.

    Why bother.

    We can do mission until we are blue in the face, as we used to say around my house when I was growing up. However, there still will be crack babies and prostitutes on our streets, and kids who don’t have a chance, and don't even know it.

    As a person in the midst of life rather than any much longer in the middle of life, I wonder sometimes what’s the use. I’ll be dead and the social problems that I see will still be there.

    Why bother.

    But I do, and here is why.

    My faith sustains me, because my faith has already saved me. And when my faith does not stretch to fill the emptiness, I find that my relationships, beginning with my wife, my cat, and my old pickup truck, and continuing on to family, extended family, and friends, will pick me up and put me in a better place. But I also want to celebrate relationships in general, particularly relationships somewhere short of intimacy that I find and enjoy in the public arena. I love my work because of the amazing persons that I meet and work with.

    I ought to say that I work for the betterment of my church and community because I am supposed to and because I believe that my work will make a difference, but I will not say that. I work for self and others for the relationships. This is where I find my faith in action and where I find my God, alive and well.

    I ought to say that I do ministry because I feel that I can make a difference, but more than 10 years of this work has led me to understand that such an attitude won’t sustain me. What sustains me are the relationships.

    Parker Palmer, a writer whom I admire, defines the place of these relationships, the community, as that place somewhere between intimacy and estrangement,where we live, and move, and have our being.

    If I act on ideals and principles, I will be disappointed and angry. If I act on the strength of the relationships that I find and enjoy, I don’t worry about goals and directions; I’m just happy to be there. And the goals and directions are stronger and more focused when my focus is on relationships rather than rhetoric.

    Oh, sure, I still study and teach Christian principles and theology, and that is as you would hope, I’m sure. I’m talking about something else that I would call the fire that fuels my efforts. And that fire is in relationships. Faith and beliefs drive me into the community, in search of fulfillment, and I always act from that base. Relationships replenish my reserves and give me hope in the moment to sustain me in times of greater need.

    Now I could give the glory to my relationship with God, but I’m not talking about that, as important as that relationship is, was, and ever more shall be. I’m talking about the joy of human interaction, esteem , and respect. I used to avoid committee work out of a desire to be alone but over time I have come to enjoy even committee work because of the people that I meet and get to know in the course of the work, which in and of itself is sometimes of little worth. The work of maintaining relationship in this broken and sinful world is the goal that I once would have described in other terms and with private misgivings. Someone wise once said that the Kingdom is now. That’s what I’m talking about. We know God when we meet to work with and enjoy one another. If we really understood why we work together, we would probably define our goals as widening the circle of friendship rather than talking about the specifics of this or that social problem and this or that response. This is the heart of the body of Christ.

    Our challenge is to reach out and go out and encounter persons we see but do not interact with, yet. In other words, our challenge is to widen the circle of friendship, by prayer, by action, and by God-in-us, each one.

Blessings and peace

Pastor Jon