I am a bridge-builder. I don’t do it well, but I do it.
That’s my job, my calling, my vocation – as I see it.
Let me try to explain the job as I see it. I’d like to use a
vignette, or maybe just the image behind a story. I am not sure I can
communicate this successfully: it may just sound nutty. And I’m ambivalent
about saying this out loud: this silly image lives in the depths of my heart,
where I am pretty vulnerable. But I’ll just tell it.
It’s not a story, really; it’s just a feeling.
The Church is divided. That has bothered me since college. I
remember vividly a reporter for the Harvard Crimson coming around doing
interviews for a story he was doing about the issues that were on the minds of
freshmen. This was spring 1969: the civil rights movement was in turmoil after
the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and we were in
Vietnam, and my brother had been dead for a year. But still, what I said was
that what troubled me most was the division in the Catholic Church. A specific
example: the students at the Harvard Catholic student center were mostly
left-wingers, and the students at the Opus Dei house just off campus were
right-wingers – and they despised each other. We needed unity, with diversity.
It bothered me then, and it bothers me still.
Today, still, there is a deep division between the “left”
and the “right” – between people who are concerned about social justice
including social issues like immigration and refugees on the left, and people
who are concerned about personal morality including abortion and marriage on
the right. The leadership of the Church is not divided over these issues, but American
Catholic laity are. I have done different things about that at different times.
But in 2012, it seemed to me that the Lord spoke to me about this division. Not
in words in my ear, but nonetheless pretty clearly, so that it would be a lie
to deny that I think he spoke, and it would have been disobedient to ignore it.
He hit me with a 2X4, because I am very slow to listen; and then he gave me a
job. He told me to protect immigrants, and to talk to his people on the right
who are treating immigrants with disrespect. (He did not say “right” or “left”
– those are my words, my abbreviations for the two sides.) He sent me, so I
have tried to respond.
That’s crazy! That guy just said that God talked to me.
Catholics don’t do that stuff. What I mean is, I had an urgent idea, which I
suspected was from God. I could have been wrong; who am I to discern? But the
idea erupted with urgency, so insistent that I would have judged myself
disobedient if I had ignored it. I try to listen, try to discern, try to obey.
Since May 2012, I have been going back and forth between the
two sides. I am completely certain – completely certain – that this particular
divide in the Church is temporary. Soon – who knows the date? soon! – the
divide won’t exist. There will still be a left and a right, people emphasizing
different things, but there will not be a gulf between them. The bridge will be
so wide and the gulf so narrow and shallow that people will go back and forth
between the two sides unaware that there was once a serious divide there. It
will be like driving down a road and going over a culvert: if you don’t look
for it, you won’t see it. That’s coming, for sure, soon. Maybe before this Pope
dies. But actually, the time it will happen is absolutely none of my business.
I’m supposed to build a bridge.
There will be a highway over a culvert one day, and no one
will even notice that they are crossing from one side to the other. But right
now there’s a rope bridge over a canyon. (Actually, there are many bridges; but
one is mine, and it’s fragile.)
Sometimes, people on one side or the other tear the bridge
apart. That’s okay. Well, it’s not okay; they shouldn’t do that; what I mean
is, I am okay with my job, which is to re-build that bridge. Sometimes people
build bridges, and sometimes they rip them up. I build, and we win.
Sometimes, it’s not even a rope bridge; it’s more like a
spider web. I am a spider in the kingdom of God, fastening a strand here, and
getting blown across to there, then hustling back and forth to strengthen the
nearly invisible line.
Sometimes when I’m trying to strengthen one end of the
bridge, people on the other side kick my work apart. That’s a nuisance, but
it’s not really a big deal. I wish they wouldn’t, but more for their sakes than
for mine. I can and do rebuild. But when a person damages a piece of someone
else’s work, they damage themselves.
Sometimes when the spider web gets ripped up at one end or
the other while I’m on it, I fall. Truly, this is not a problem at all; these
moments are among the best times in the business, because I get to see who else
is building across the chasm. I don’t always see them when I’m spinning, but
they catch me when I fall, and I get to see them.
One of the other bridge-builders is the Pope. He goes back
and forth between the two sides, and people don’t know what to make of him. And
– God have mercy on me and protect me from pride – I DO see what he’s doing,
because I’m doing it too. He’s a lot better at it. He’s a trip! He’s fun to
watch!
Of course the main bridge-builder is Jesus himself. He wants
us to take responsibility for building, but he’s in there too. He’s a slender
guy, but tougher than hell. He is nailed to the left side and nailed to the
right side, which sort of measures the width of the divide: we can’t ever be
more than 5-6 feet apart if we are faithful to him. We are nailed to each other! So sometimes when my web gets kicked apart,
and I can’t get back to either side, and I just fall, just fall, just a spider
in the wind – I land on him.
If I’m not on the left or the right, nor building on a
bridge between, I’m not doing my job. But that’s okay, sometimes. My life is
more than my work (and my work is more than my job). So I can hang out for a
while, sitting on the Lord. Forget the bridge! Just do some little stuff, to
make The Bridge-Builder smile. Maybe I can put a few sticky strings between a
couple of thorns, to keep flies from messing in the Lord’s blood. Or maybe I
can scare the flies away, keeping them out of his eyes. Little stuff, like
making an immigrant or a child laugh. Then I get blown back to the left or
right, and start work again.
Old friends ask, “Which side are you on?” I understand their
question. But I am a bridge-builder, and I belong on both sides, and in between.
And I think, my old friends and my dear friends and my dear old friends, that you
belong in the chasm too.
John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe,
bridge-builder wannabe and occasional spider
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