FAITH-FILLED FEET

A friend of mine passed along a sign he once saw on an Indian Reservation: "The sign of God's presence with you is that your feet are where you do not expect them to be." The late Father Dan Berrigan is said to have put that thought in more earthy terms (edited here to keep this column rated "G"): "Faith is where your 'backside' is," as in "when you are up to you knees in an alligator pond, faith in God is all important."

There are times when we all find ourselves knee-deep in a mess, whether than mess is of our own creation or whether we just happened upon it. In such a situation we are called to respond; we have no choice but to respond. We may not like being where we are, but there we are and there is nothing we can do about it. Crying and bellyaching are a useless waste of good breath at that moment.

It is in that moment, moments like these, that we are called to live out what we believe. It is in moments like these that we discover that we have been placed there or found ourselves there because that is where God wants us to be at that moment in our lives. Of course, it is usually only after the fact that we make this discovery about how God works in our lives.

That is not to say that God only works with us when there is some mess to clean up. It is to say that so often, when we are in such messes, we have a very difficult time being able to see anything but the mess and thinking about nothing else than getting out of it as quickly as possible. Such thoughts often preclude the ability of God's intervention and the working out of our faith.

Dan Berrigan used to put himself into situations most of us would avoid and he used them to speak of his own personal faith. Whether others agreed with him was beside the point. My point is that most of us simply avoid touchy situations that demand a faith response simply because we don't want to get involved. Sadly, sometimes our response is to not get involved and simply walk away leaving the mess to be handled by someone else who will.

The sign on the Indian Reservation reminded my friend, who really did not want to be there, himself having been raised in a rather comfortable New England suburb, that he was there because God wanted him there to live out his faith at that moment in his life. He admitted that it was, as usual, only after much complaining and soul-searching that he finally understood why he was there. That did not make the situation any easier to deal with. It simply allowed him to understand why.

Wherever we find ourselves, there we are called to live out our faith. The good part of all this is that most of the time we find ourselves on safe ground rather than in alligator pits. The more difficult part is to always remember that no matter where we are -- good, bad or otherwise -- the living out of our faith never takes a day off, or at least it should not. The truth of the matter is that like Moses at the burning bush, no matter where the ground or what it is like, we are always standing on holy ground.