Never Satisfied

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said,
‘He is possessed by a demon.’
The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said,
‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’

Don't we do the same? I think about when I taught school and thought of some parents and downright negligent (some were but not many) and how thin the line was between negligent and "helicopter parent." There were few parents I dealt with who were just ok. And they were the ones I thought I'd be like when I was a parent. As it turns out, I'm probably closer to the negligent side of that fine line than I'd like to admit, but not so close as to truly earn that title.

I think about the problems I had with conservative Catholics down in Texas and then how annoyed I was with angry liberals here in St. Louis. I'm more liberal in my Catholicism than the average, but those who fell to either side were "wrong."

I think about people with not as much education as I have ("uneducated" or "unchurched" as the case might be) and those with lots more than I have being dismissed in my mind as not living in the real world or just being plain overbearing. I catch myself mocking those who are sticklers for grammar rules and sighing when others make the mistakes that are my pet peeves. Those who live in the county because they are afraid of the city are weak; those who choose to live further into more dangerous parts of the city are crazy.

I do it all the time. "Not like me" is the worst label I can give another person.

And there goes Jesus again, pointing out this most human of foibles, of sins. And I'm laid bare with my sharp tongue and quick wit (or so I would like to believe--those who are slower are, well, slow, and those who are quicker are just plain mean).

What if we could learn from those with more education and teach those with less? Without resentment or mockery? What if we could accept that most families do the best they can with what they have and until we live a month in their houses....What if we could acknowledge that not every person is cut out to live in our neighborhood, that sometimes people choose the places where they live but oftentimes those places are chosen for them? What if we could see that some folks might have a longer way to tread than we do in some areas but that there are things we cannot see about them and we'd best not say anything at all?

What if we all did what our mothers or first grade teachers or grandfathers told us to do and just said nothing if we didn't have anything nice to say? Better yet, what if we just thought nothing if we didn't have anything nice to think?

Perhaps there would be some room in our heads for God to come and settle in for a long winter's night.