Fire Starter

“If you are what you should be, you would set the world ablaze”

-Catherine of Sienna

“You can’t start a fire, worrying about your little world falling apart”

– Bruce Springsteen

Those two quotes have been sitting in my brain for a while now. I keep wanting to put them together. The Bruce Springsteen song, Dancing in the Dark, is on my workout playlist. Every time it comes on, as I’m padding along on the treadmill, I think to myself, “I ought to write a blog post about this line and the quote from St. Catherine.” So here I go, even though I’m not entirely sure what I want to say.

I think St. Catherine is talking about me. She’s talking about each of us. She’s telling us what God tells us; GO! Go out, be in the world, and change it through the power of my name. If you open your heart to me, and let me do with you what I will, you will set the world on fire.

Bruce is saying something similar, something which deals with what comes after.

When I think about what St. Catherine is charging me with, my immediate reaction is a pit in my stomach and sweaty palms. “Wait, you want me to do what? Proclaim the Good News to the world? Me?”

And then the bone crushing fear sets in.

“What will they think of me? If I talk about _____________ (insert controversial topic here), will I have any friends left? What if so-and-so unfriends me? What if they call me names? What if I get so flustered I can’t speak the truth in love?”

That’s where Bruce’s lyric comes in, as a big old reminder:

You can’t start a fire, worrying about your little world falling apart.

I can start a fire. I can live a life of safety, where I never talk about anything that’s unpleasant or controversial. I can’t do both.

Which is really another way of saying: I can spread the Gospel, or I can win friends and influence people. I can’t really do both. I can try to do both, but then neither will be done well.

There are things I choose not to write about on this blog because I like the blog friends I have, I like the community here. If I talk about some of the things I feel are important, will that community turn against me?

If I bring up words like common good, solidarity, and catholic social teaching, will you roll your eyes and walk away? Well, if you’re Catholic, I sure hope not. But some of you probably will.

I think that’s alright. I’ve finally gotten over my fear of posting about pro-life, so now I think it’s time to tackle…everything else.

I have a masters degree in social justice, which I am definitely not using, and which I hardly ever talk about. But I’m going to start talking about it. What good is knowledge if it’s not shared? God’s concern for the poor, and how we are to share in that concern is part of the Truth. It’s time to talk about it here.

The social teachings of the Church are a beautiful, beautiful thing. They are, like so many other things, not taught well or often enough.

I don’t know if this little blog will ever start any fires, but just in case He wills it so, I’m no longer worried about this little world, or any other, falling apart.