A church with a heart is place to be thankful for - appreciating the Catholic Church as a place for families and traditions - Column - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 12, 1997 by Kris Berggren

Last week my children brought home a Sunday school handout about the story of the widow who gave her last two coins to the temple collection. Jesus lauds her for giving all she had, though his friends protest that the rich men have given bags and bags of money and are more deserving of recognition.

That story has always been one of my favorites, because it reminds me that giving is more blessed when it comes not from abundance, but from need. Market value is not supreme in the reign of God!

The children in the class had been asked to draw a picture of something that someone had given them that they treasure. My son drew a picture of a teddy bear that my mother, who didn't live to see him turn two, gave him. My daughter drew a picture of her pet cat, Indigo.

In thinking about what I treasure, besides the obvious short list -- family, health, education -- in this season of giving and receiving gifts, I would like to say I am grateful for my church.

My church is a place where we come together to express our needs, seek solace, lean on one another, share coffee and cookies after worship, mourn our dead, celebrate our saints, search for the transcendent, grasp at hope, talk about and try to practice justice. We see in each other's faces the face of our God. We pray with and for those we disagree with, those we cannot understand, and those whose needs resonate deeply in our hearts.

I love the fact that my kids can identify my church's red rock steeple from a bend on the freeway just south of the downtown skyline. "There's our `turts,'" my middle child used to point out with delight whenever we drove by, before she'd mastered the `ch' sound.

My church is not perfect. It is linked inextricably to "the church," which too many people despise and denounce, and for too many good reasons. The larger church is perceived by many outsiders as a monolithic institution, the same in Indianapolis as Istanbul, the price for belonging being one's ability to think for oneself. Yet I wrestle with whether I would feel at home in any other parish, any other church.

I ask other Catholics why they stay in the church and they don't always know. Their answer is often something like this, "Where else would I go' While that may sound desperate, I maintain there is an answer beyond what is rational: What keeps us here is an acknowledgment that something beautiful and good is expressed in our sacraments, our worship, our collective understanding of life as it is meant to be lived, our acceptance of paradox, our mysticism, our consciousness of the moment of grace in the present, our awareness of God's presence in the ordinary facts of our lives, and the consistent call to give from our need.

So here I am, thankful for the traditions that anchor me, for those who have kept the traditions alive in risky times and in tiring times, and especially for those who challenge us to imagine our traditions in new ways. I am thankful for those who help me to pass these traditions on to my children, for all the teachers and ministers and storytellers and musicians and artists who inspire and lead us. I am thankful for a God who loved us humans -- silly and weak though we are -- enough to take a chance on history, to join us as one of us.

We got a phone call the other day from a volunteer in the parish who is starting a family choir. My husband wanted to support her in this effort, and wanted all of us to participate together. My reaction was to list all the reasons why I didn't want to participate: Our youngest is too antsy; I can't sing; we have too many commitments as it is. He saw it as a great family activity, one that would stretch us and get the kids involved, allow them to give something to our community.

When my five-year-old asked me on Saturday night before the first practice if I was going to sing, for some reason I said, "If I do it, will you?" And she said, "Yep."

So there, on Sunday morning, were some of the families of our church. Lots of little kids, some parents, some children with their musical instruments, even our teenage baby sitter -- there under duress, I understand, but there nonetheless.

The choir director talked about her experience as a kid in her church choir, where she felt really special up there in the loft, and how she wanted to share that with the children of our parish, including her three. She played the melodies, sang harmony in her beautiful alto and instructed us in the choir walk, a swaying, slow side-to-side march that anyone who's ever seen a Baptist choir in action would know. As we sang, I felt special, too. The music we were creating was an expression, though certainly imperfect, of this gift of faith that we are given and we give back.

That evening at home, we practiced our songs together before bedtime. It was fun. I'm no Maria Callas -- or even Amy Grant -- but I too, can sing from my need.