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  Family - Weekend Effect

What Are You Doing Out THERE, Ralph?

Jerry & Tippy Case

(Excerpted from 1981 June Worldwide Family Spirit magazine)

It may sound obvious' or a little trite and shopworn, but it constantly amazes us how huge an effect the Weekend had on our lives. You prob¬ably haven't been to our house because most people don't just-stop by. You have to want to go there; and once you get there, there's nowhere else to go. It's up on a hill, surrounded by pine trees, so that no one can see in our windows. Isolated. When we bought that house we thought it was absolutely perfect: nobody would bother us; it was private. If it had had a moat around it, we would have pulled up the draw-bridge. We were loners. Then we made this Weekend . . .

The first thing they did on that Weekend was give us back to each other, in new and wondrous ways. And at lunch on Sunday, the two of us were busy dreaming and talking of our new life-how much more delight and enjoyment we would find in each other as we scampered around our house and lawn, two sylvan nymphs, so young and so in love.

We went to the afternoon talks just to be polite; we couldn't imagine they would, or could, be anything more than icing. And the final talk, as you well know, was entitled, "The Open & Apostolic Couple." Hoo Hah! It really was a "now that we have your attention" experience; and, we sat there stunned. Disbelief, fear, resentment, disappointment, anger-and those in only the first five minutes! "O & A," they said, "Off your Ass."

And, we wanted to, but not today. Soon. Don't call us, we'll call you. Because we didn't want to, more than we wanted to. But mixed up with all the other feelings, making a run for the finish line and destined to come in first by a length, was hope. Hope for our-selves, hope for our children, hope for our families, hope for our friends, hope for the sick, the halt and the lame, hope for the lonely, the sad and the mis¬understood. Hope for the world. And what a teasing, insinuous, luring, and tempting hope it was.

And something inside each of us was screaming: "Don't be a sucker!!" But some dearer, gentler part was saying, "It's true, it's true. Please listen, it's true." We circled and sniffed a bit longer, and went for it.

We needed that imperative to get up and get moving. We'd made incredible discoveries and taken giant steps toward each other, but there was also a tiny little part that was afraid that maybe it was all too good to be true-that when we got home all that beauty is going to disappear in a puff of smoke.

I wrote in my book that I wanted to stay there in the retreat house for the rest of our lives, much less go home, much less leave our home. But they told us that love isn't love till you give it away; that that was part of that glorious package we'd been offered. That everything we gave we'd get back 100 fold.

And so we got up and went out. We'd been told we could change the world and we belied it. We didn't know anything about mission or Sacrament; even matrimony was a priest's word, a word that sounded as strange to our ears as apostolic, spirituality, or even dialogue. But we went, and got "involved." We got involved with Mar¬riage Encounter, up to our ears. We got involved in our parish. We got involved, with members of our family, in ways we never had before.

I think if we were asked why we got involved, several answers.4vould occur to us. Where certainly was a strong sense of obligation present. We had been given a lot and wanted to some-how pass it along. That remains strong in us even today. And there was a belief that we were dealing with a huge slice of truth-a fine-edged, cutting truth that had to be lived and spoken. We couldn't just sit on it.

Later, there was new wisdom and new reasons: renewal of the Catholic Church, building Christian community, living the four marks of the Church. But always, first and foremost, head and shoulders, loud and clear, it was the people. The people we didn't know, but who we wanted to have a crack at life. They sure weren't climbing our hill to find us; so, we filled in the imaginary moat, closed the door behind us, and went out looking for them.

The Weekend gave us many gifts that were hidden from us at first. It awakened us to the needs and hungers in the people around us-couples lost in their marriage, teenagers who need to "talk it out," kids who can't stand religion, a whole neighborhood that needs to feel warmth.

Their needs seemed very similar to our own-and we knew we could talk about ourselves. The Weekend, and our dialogue, gave us confidence in ourselves and the power we have as a couple; and it gave us the itch to do things together instead of each going our own way. It gave us a belief that we could change the world; and that wasn't a pipedream, it was a certainty. A11 that was needed was a few other good couples-and Marriage En-counter had plenty of those.

So we had the vision, we had the urge, and there were plenty of others to help and be helped. But Marriage Encounter gave us something really practical, too. It gave us, ready made, a program to push. It gave us something to sell that we wanted the world to buy. We didn't have to search for a way or give life to our loved ones, wonder how to give meaning to empty lives, or how to make the Church real and vital.

We had a product that met loneliness and confusion head on, and, with thousands like us we took to the street like a bunch of crazed vacuum cleaner salesmen and did a hard sell on the Marriage Encounter Weekend. And we blew the top off the sales charts.

But somewhere along the line even though we still saw the Weekend as the solution to everything, we realized we didn't belong to Marriage Encounter but to the Church. Somewhere along the line, we'd internalized words like Sacrament, apostle and mission. We grasped the phrase "priestly people" and knew that what we were involved in was ministry. And it couldn't be just ministry in Marriage Encounter; we had to branch out a little.

We were in love with the Marriage Encounter Weekend, and still are, but more and more we're understanding that it was the people on those Weekends that mattered. They had the needs, and the Weekend met them. But what about all the people who weren't interested in going? They deserved to be loved, too.

We ran and got elected to our parish council. On a scale of 1 to 10, I personally would give it a 3. But we gave it a good shot for two years, and, we think, had an impact on people "We became the parish contact for our Bishop's program. Definitely a 1. Then we got involved with the engaged-a 7 or maybe even an 8. We know that nothing will ever be a 10, because we can't stop comparing to Marriage Encounter-a 102.

For us, it has been special-a once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated, all-engrossing involvement, and there will never be an equal to it-and that's OK. That doesn't mean we give up on all the other ways we can find to minister to people. And the people are every-where, wondering if tomorrow has to be just like today, wondering why Popes and Presidents get shot, wondering if anybody really cares about them. We do, and you do. But they need more than just caring. They need our passionate involvement with them.

Sometimes we figure it's time to change our phone number, or move. It's time for a rest, it's all too much. And maybe it is, maybe we have to be a little more careful about saying "yes" too often. But that's us, not it. I got a call last month to help collect for the Bishop's Fund. I said, "No, we're spread too thin." The next thing I knew, Tippy was calling back saying, "Yes." I got a bit annoyed, but she said, "They need help." And the important word to her was "they," not "help."

Sometimes it's hard to find the line between ministering to people and doing good. They really are both needed. When we're ministering, though, we feel the pain and the needs of people and we'll do anything to fill those needs. The emphasis is on people, not the work. We put out our parish newspaper for awhile. That was a job we were doing, pure and simple, because we had no idea who read that paper, if they read it, or what they needed to read about.

The parish council was a job, at least for us. We saw lots of needs there, and at times we ached for all those who were searching for a family within the parish and getting lost. But we were never able, somehow, to get past the paper shuffling and task assignments to zero in on those people in a personal way. The contact and the caring on a sustained basis was missing for us.

We were asked, once, with a large group of people, to bring a full cup. The size of the cup didn't matter; perhaps we had a small one, perhaps a large one. The plea was that whatever size was brought, bring it full.

We find that both comforting and challenging. Comforting because we don't have to compare ourselves to the Joneses, who seem able to do so much and not ever waiver. We can just do all we're able and that's all that's asked. And challenging, because we only found the size of our cup by pushing it to its limit. The size of our cup can change from month to month; some-times it's only an egg-cup, sometimes a barrel. But we try and bring all we have.

Thoreau wound up in jail once, for refusing to pay an unjust tax. And Emerson, walking by, saw him behind the barred windows. Emerson said, "What are you doing in there, Henry?" And Thoreau replied, "What are you doing out there, Ralph?"

And there it is, and it's unassailable. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem! We know the solution-it’s loving people who need love, with a wild, sustaining passion that doesn't count cost and doesn't measure and doesn't ask why. It’s being crazy enough and daring enough to risk being different and getting others to sit up and question the way they're living. We know we can change the world with that kind of ministry.

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