Life-Giving Summer Conversations

Dear Friends,

With the Fourth of July behind us, we are well and truly into summer – a time to renew ourselves and if we are alert enough and concerned enough – to renew the  conversations  about culture that we engage in at parties, picnics, beaches, family events and neighborhood gatherings.  We are citizens of our world and our country, yet often, we reduce our summer talk to the very mundane: films, music, fashion, swipes at national or international figures. But how much substantive talk do we engage in as adult believers in the Risen Christ –along with others citizens, honest seekers and struggling people who hold our values or quite different values, for that matter?

Twice within the last several months, I’ve read articles by Catholic authors who urge all of us to engage in conversations that could change the culture or our country and time, without bemoaning or attacking an existing law, and find another more life-giving way of going forward. The Jesuit Tom Reese wrote about abortion laws this way. Tom Roberts, Executive Editor of The National Catholic Reporter, quotes opponents to the California End of Life Option Act: ” One of our goals is that at the end of ten years(the lifespan of the law),no one see the need to renew a law like that because we’ve changed the conversation and people are aware that other resources are available.”

Other resources are available. Even today, for life’s most challenging issues, other resources are available. But people don’t know it. That’s why we need to learn in whatever ways possible what resource are available to deal with thorny issues, and talk about them with others. Public perceptions can change, but such a change requires that life giving messages are shared person to person. Not all summer gatherings create spaces to have these conversations, but let’s be alert for those that do.

How we as adults create the future and ground it is up to us. True, our childhood influences our adult life greatly. But we do ourselves a disservice if we use as a perpetual excuse for what we do as adults that” our parents’ didn’t teach us well” or “we didn’t have certain advantages in our schooling or family life or among our friends.”

From the time of his baptism and temptations in the desert, through his passion, death and resurrection, Jesus was moved from within. That’s our call too. To be moved from within – to obey the laws of our land, certainly, but more – to obey what no external force can enforce: to become strong disciples who look for creative ways to help society recognize as destructive the ways that lead to death, not life. And to look for creative ways to treasure the lives of the unborn, the dying, migrants at the borders, everyone whose life is not valued.

Happy summer. May your conversations be generous and encouraging of life, along with being fun, relaxing and  informative.

~Sister Joan Sobala