What can't be taught...

Saturday morning I'll be on the road again. Two days to take care of things and then back home.

I wish it wasn't this way, but the budget numbers don't lie. We've given somewhere just above half of what we need to survive as a parish and by the end of the year the trend should be confirmed. If I had come to live in LaCrosse would there have been enough to keep food on the table or would I be calling the Bishop even now asking for someplace, anyplace, so that my wife and I don't have to eat ramen noodles?

The people of St. Elias are good people, in fact very good people, who have had to endure thier parish being started, abandoned, restarted, and held together by the mighty efforts of a few. Those who desire convenience or need to be carried by others have long since faded away. Being a small parish, like being a family, is sometimes hard work and not for the timid.

So what we have on Sunday morning are the survivors and a few who, swimming against the tide, have made it to our shores. Again, good people all but probably very tired. Only a kind of love keeps them from going down the street to the more glamorous churches with beautiful facilities, hip music, and a ton of programs. My guess is that some of them are also just hanging on.

But I am waiting.

Because everything in the life of the church can be taught except for one thing. There is an intangible move of the Holy Spirit that cannot be finessed, coerced, or manipulated, a move that can only be caught and is essential if tiny churches are ever going to break out to become self-sustaining and then vibrant. If God does not stir hearts then all the programs and appeals and sermons in the world will mean nothing.

If just for one moment the Holy Spirit can find a crack in the accumulated debris of self-doubt, sadness, loss, futility, and struggle that cover the souls of these people and touch the tender part of them that still desires to hope and believe and want something better the world can change. If but for one moment they can have the eyes of faith and see themselves as God sees them and want to be what God wants them to be a fire will start and hell itself will not be able to put it out.

Oh God please...

And until then I will wait.