Download Uncomfortable Spirituality… When you listen to Ignatius, he shakes

Uncomfortable Spirituality…
When you listen to Ignatius, he shakes you from your comfortable existence and pushes you into
the prickly and hard edges of truly seeing the inequities of humanity that surround us as we try
to dodge them on our way to the next hurried distraction of an important meeting or
conference. He forces you to look at injustice through the lens of your own inaction. It becomes
a stinging place. He ruins your excuses.
As I walked into the Ignatian Solidarity Network, 2016 Family Teach-In for Justice on Saturday,
12 November, I stopped; looked around and my first thought was “I’m outta here.” I was
staring at approximately 1600 people between the ages of 15 and 18. I have always been smug
in the sense I have spent a lifetime around young people. Of course, they were US Marines.
From this group, I expected chaos and immaturity. What I received was a gift of a renewed
dedication to justice, enlightenment and an honest appreciation for the depth of our youth.
I sat in the audience and took copious notes from the speakers. Every so often, I stopped and
looked closely at the giant screens in front of me to assure myself the presenter was truly 16
years of age. Throughout the weekend, I heard young people speak to their personal lives. I
learned in the United States, there are currently approximately 4.5 million children under the
age of 18 who were born in the United States, but whose parents are undocumented. The
children are United States citizens. They live in fear – each day their parents will be rounded up
and deported. I listen as they attempted to portray their concerns with a clinical concern and
break down to sobs as the truth of their fears overwhelmed them. When I looked at them, I
realized the number of young Marines with whom I served and watched die for this nation.
They probably carried with them the secret of undocumented parents.
When I walked the corridors during the breaks, I found myself returning to the table of the Kino
Border Initiative. I know organization, but looked at it in a different light. They are the people
who Fr. Dan Berrigan said, “are not involved with comfortable spirituality – with its private, oneto-one relationship with God – but [possess] an uncomfortable spirituality that finds God in the
poor, in the marginalized, and in the enemy and evokes loving action on their behalf.”
On my home, I reflected on “who is my brother?” I’ve listened to all the sermons, newscasts
and reports, which define the problems of our society. I’ve had my own opinions about who is
“right or wrong,” and which party is “correct.” Yet, as I reflected on the people with whom I
just spent the weekend. They were not encumbered by my “adult” considerations. They went
straight to the core of it all. They understood what Pope Francis meant, “No amount of 'peacebuilding' will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained, in a society that
ignores, pushes to the margins, or excludes a part of itself; it loses something essential. We must
never, never allow the throwaway culture to enter our hearts! ... No one is disposable!”