Taking the Time to Make a Difference

I don’t know quite how to describe it. For about a year and a-half, my staff and I have been engaged in a project – but now it is complete — and my feelings are many and mixed. The project is a full-color magazine, a one-of-a-kind publication on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger as Fourth Bishop of Evansville. It is an effort to examine how our diocese has changed during this 20-year slice of the life of the Catholic Church in southwestern Indiana. Over the months from the idea to the actual, the project took more and more energy. Now it is finished, but I can’t quite let it go. Scores of people have become involved in this project, including advertisers, organizers, writers, designers, proof readers and others. Each of them helped give it life. Graphics and articles and ads spring from the minds of the creative people, laboring alone and together. Over the months from conception to birth, so to speak, the project demanded more and more of us all. Now, we are sending this child out into the world, and we wonder – as all parents do – did we do enough? Will people see the beauty of it? Or its flaws?

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All major human endeavors have a lot in common. Whether it is a magazine writing project, a home construction project, a new job responsibility, a course of studies or even a career choice or a commitment to church or community – they all have a lot in common. They take time, they take effort, they take over. And then you miss them when they are gone.

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A decade or so ago, I built a wooden fence at home, along our property line. It took months and months to build it. I designed the fence. I put in the posts. I bought the lumber. I completed the task, section by section. And after it was finished, I was happy with the result, but I was sad that the creative engagement in it was over. The finished product was imperfect, as is every human effort. The tantalizing notion of building the perfect fence had to give way to the reality of lumber less than straight and craftsmanship less than perfect. But more difficult to accept than the acknowledgment of personal imperfection was the fact that the task that had engaged both my abilities and my imagination had come to an end. Perhaps the philosopher’s interpretation of the Myth of Sisyphus is the ultimate truth. Sisyphus was the mythological figure condemned to roll a stone uphill forever, never reaching the top of the mountain. Maybe the goal is unreachable. Maybe the effort is by itself, enough. In Christian terms, perhaps, our efforts to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth will never be completed. Our prayer, “thy kingdom come,” will never be outdated. Our struggle is enough. Restless will be our hearts, as St. Augustine said, until we rest in the Lord. It is only Jesus who has earned the right to say, “It is finished.”

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Take the time today to examine the projects of your life – and in the words of that prayer of St. Francis – to change what can be changed and to accept what is beyond your control. If you have children, help them to accept and enjoy their accomplishments. But most of all, help them to know that you love them enough to let them go, and that your love will continue in their successes and failures. Take the time to help another to reach a goal. It might be a child learning the rules and techniques of a game or a sport, or a newcomer learning the common language and conventions of our community, or a young couple trying to learn what it takes to make a successful marriage and family. Your witness can make a difference. Whether or not you can always see the goal may not be as important as the help you give another along the way.

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